Day six of NaoWriMo, and the second day of trying to fit in the regular day job in around it as well, and, somewhat surprisingly, I'm still enjoying the whole experience, and still even being energised by it. I'm very confident that I'll hit a wall sooner or later (my guess is towards the end of next week), and so I'm doing everything I can to keep ahead on my word count while I still can. This really is the main difference between writing at any other time, and writing in November. This month, you can't stall because you're waiting for inspiration to kick in, you just have to write regardless. Of course, that's what every how to write book tells you anyway, and it's been said by so many famous authors, you could re-tweet it fifty times over in fifty different easy to digest quotes. but it has to be said, the actually being forced to get down and do it is very instructive.
Tonight, I'm discoveri g where my first 'seal' is. There's probably already a term for it that's better than seal, but sin I'm discovering this for the first time, since this is my blog, and since you and I are the only damn people who actually stop by this place, then 'seal' is what we'll go with. For me, it was around the 12,000 word mark. I imagine it can vary wildly in any direction for various writers, but for me it was 12,000. While working on my novel, it was getting to be a bit of a struggle to get past 10,000. There were still some major scenes I hadn't even started yet, but I knew this story couldn't possibly get up to 20,000, and I wasn't just going to fill it with waffle simply to get to the 50k mark. Plus, I still didn't really know why the things were happening, were happening. Getting past 12,000 .. Well, it wasn't exactly meandering, but it was certainly getting to be a hack job as I struggled to find out what was going on in my heroine's head.
And then ... Well, she didn't tell me, not exactly (she's actually a frustratingly private indidvual, which, as it turns out, is becoming a major plot point), but I began to understand her more, and why she was reacting in a certain way in certain situations. And that expansive word count .. It suddenly became - not a burden, not a chore - but a boon. A blessing. Suddenly I have all this elbow room, which is vital. It's good to have it as a goal, because it forces the novice writer to have something to strive for that can't just be hacked out in one draft and sent off to a short story competition. But as well as a target, it becomes something that I absolutely wasn't expecting: a foundation, a bedrock, a support. That's taken me somewhat by surprise, although I still maintain I may not be able to get anywhere near the 50k target when it comes down to it.
(the other thing that's taken me surprise is that the cafe where I'm writing this is playing obscure Gloria Estefan songs. I don't think I've thought about here in, like, fifteen years. Not outside of a joke by Chandler in Friends)
Terrifyingly, I'm still having ideas for short stories, which need at least some of them written down before the fade out of the memory, but frankly, as writing problems go, this is small beer. I've managed to write at least something on each day so far, so hopefully I've squirrelled away enough nuts (that's a saying, right?) for those inevitable days when I'm going to come up with absolutely nothing.
In non-NaNoWriMo news, I've just had a haircut. I've had a bit more cut off than I intended, but that still means that I have longer hair than most other men I know. I just couldn't have neck-length hair in Movember. I looked disturbingly like Tony Ferrino, which is a look I really can't pull off. I have enough problems pulling off my own face. If you know what I mean.
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