Still, somehow, slightly ahead of schedule for the NaNoWriMo book. This more impressive when I didn't manage to write a damn thing yesterday. What's also comforting g is the fact gang , while I seem to have spent most of today's session writing only to top up my word count, I don't think I've quite gotten into the region of waffling just yet. Yet. I'm not saying the story makes any sense yet, or is even worth reading, but it still - remarkably - looks like its got some potential.
But here's the thing. While it might have some potential, it's still, and at the same time, quite terrible. It's logic judges all over the place, the main villain (and the main character, come to that) are horrifically underwritten, and I still - still - don't know the main engine of the piece, the macguffin, the actual reason why all these events are happening. Knowing that would solve a couple of other problems and unanswered questions, which, in turn, would begin to provide story threads all of their own (for instance, I'm entirely unable to work out if my main character is new to the town in which this story is set, or knows the streets well. Equally, I can't decide if she has history in some secret shadowy organisation - which would provide her with the skills she needs to survive the plot - or if she's simply managing not to die through a mixture of wit and dumb luck.
However, in the last couple of days, I've come to the conclusion that none of it matters. Nobody has to read the damn thing anyway. Quite often, you're told to lock what you've written away in a bottom drawer before taking it out again a month or so later before attempting re-writes. Nobody, as far as I'm aware, has yet discussed the freedom inherent in choosing to leave the manuscript in the bottom drawer with absolutely no intention of reading it again. You might consider that hacking out 50,000 words with no intention of tailoring it into a finished, readable piece, might be a waste of time, particularly if the hack draft (that isn't even a first draft, not really) is already better than some things you've already downloaded onto your kindle.
But actually, that approach gives you a remarkable amount of freedom. Nobody's expecting this finished novel, frankly, nobody cares. Getting those 50,000 words down is just boot camp, an education. It's well known that Stephen King has a couple of completed novels locked away somewhere, that he has no intention of publishing. These date back from before the publication of 'Carrie'. In many ways, those novels were a way of paying dues, of sharpening pencils, before the 'real' work of novel writing began. There's no real reason why the novels written all over the world this month can't serve the same purpose. It means that if you're half way through a book that is merely 'ok' - but probably will never be good enough for an actual book deal - can still be completed. This isn't about the novel, it's about the writing.
And, well. If it is actually pretty good ....
Well. That's a different story.
NaNoWriMo Word Count: 22,237
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