Oh, right now? It's painful. Last time, I was talking about how the expanded word count was actually a boon rather than an albatross around my neck. Even as I wrote those words, I knew I was placing a curse on myself. I knew that I was about to dive into literay quicksand, where I would suddenly come to a point where I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why my characters were doing the things that they were doing, or indeed what they would do next. I can't work out the logical transition between one set piece and the next. The motives of absolutely everybody involved are suddenly very weak at best, contrived at .. uh, second best. I haven't managed to write my lead character as well as I'd like (she's either a typical pulp fiction type 'dame', which is what I'd originally envisaged, which means that she gets quite violent with the long line of villains lining up to attack her - or she's an innocent, struggling to keep up with events as they threaten to overwhelm her. Both have their merits, but the second arguably makes her more likeable, albeit with a story that will be more difficult to write. The former option is much more dynamic, and more fun to write - and read - but I haven't yet worked out how not to put her across as a bit psychotic. All of this, of course, shouldn't detract that in this blog entry I've been using brackets much longer than is grammatically helpful. Hang on ... ).
The comforting thing about all of this hack writing, weak story telling, and unbelievable characters, is that I was warned about it. Everyone expects this in week 2. It's proudly claimed as a right of passage, a badge of honour. It merits a chapter all of its own in the official NaNoWriMo book, aptly called 'No Plot? No Problem!' So I've spent this evening hacking out a couple of thousand, forcing myself not to think about plot or coherence for longer than eight seconds. It's been writing that has felt more like a chore - this is the NaNoWriMo equalivent of eating your broccoli before you're allowed loose on the toffee cheesecake - and it's the only time working on this that my body has claimed the usual writer's complaint of a locked back. But, somewhere, vaguely, at the back of my mind, I'm aware of some good foundations being laid down.
Even so, I'm having difficulties with my lead character. She's a beautiful, witty and dynamic woman - but I have to tread a very fine line between depicting a character who just happens to be all those things, and not just simply some hack male writers fantasy of what feminine strength is. Too many of us have suffered the clumsy scene in amateur writing when the heroine steps out of the shower and takes a moment to admire her perfect body in the steam tinged mirror, an event that has pretty much NEVER HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE, EVER. Depressingly, I've seen it in at least one book written by an author respected enough, and with a career that was long enough, that you'd have thought he'd have left that thing behind long ago. What makes the task slightly more challenging in my case, however, is that what I'm writing is, for all intents and purposes, a pulp novel, a dime paperback, where such tantalisation is pretty much part of the party. I'm just trying to find a balance of a character that's genuinely sexy, without all the tiresome gratuitousness. That's not even a real word, but frankly I don't care. That's what NaNoWriMo does to you. You complete an entire novel, but the trade is that you can no longer write in your native language. Or any language, for that matter.
Pleasingly, however, I'm - just - ahead of the word count schedule. Once I've got past - say - thirty thousand, I feel that I might have a good sense of the surroundings, in the same way that you might feel on your first day in a new town. I've got the keys cut, and I staked out where the local coffee shop with free wi-fi is. Over the next few days, I've got to start going down some dark back streets.
Look, I'm tired. I don't know if that last paragraph was real, or a metaphor, either.
Word Count: 19,128
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