Nanowrimo, Day 4: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Whenever I'm not working on the Nanowrimo novel, it's defeating me. I can't see a way through it, the plotting seems simplistic, the characters badly sketched out, and, most crucially, I have no idea what I'm going to do to progress the story further. It's so easy to get a bit scared off, and run away. Gibbering. What tends to happen, however, is once I've managed to force myself in front of the computer, with the understanding that I really am going to write something, no matter about the fear that it could well be terrible. Writing without looking back is remarkably focussing to the narrative flow. 

However, I'm saying that on what's essentially my last day off before returning to work. It's not really, I was doing the youth theatre yesterday, and I had my improv class tonight, but that's not like a full day at the office. It'll be interesting to see what I come up with - if I can come up with anything - after 8 hours of an exhausting job. My parameters of what's acceptable about the fear of writing something that's terrible may well have to be widened. 

I've had a concern that while I know most of the events that occur in my novel, I don't really know why they're happening. There's not yet a logical catalyst to everything kicking off. Certain things have begun to slide into place today, but it's still doesn't quite make sense. I'm having to make. Y characters work against what they'd logially want to do in order to make the story work. That's not always a great way to work, but given the time constraints, I don't have much choice. Now, one of two things will happen: either my plot will simply snap, because it just doesn't want to go that way (which, despite what you might think, is actually a good thing, because it means that the characters are developing strong personalities), or that I will have forced myself to have thought of a good reason why my characters are doing things they don't want to do. In my downtime, I've been re-watching old episodes of 24, and quite often, Jack Bauer (or someone else) is acting under duress, being forced to act the the bad guy for a greater good. That's begun to stir things in my imagination as to why my main character is having to act the way she is. If nothing else, it's a good enough reason for me to claim that watching box sets comes under the banner of 'research'. 

I'm hoping to hit the 10k mark before the weekend, well, ends. In the very strictest sense, that's not going to happen, because at the time of writing this sentence, it's about three minutes from midnight, but I'm going to play the Christmas Eve defence, and say that it's not Monday until I've slept. I figure I've got about a hour before fatigue takes me like a six foot mugger in an alleyway. My main stumbling block this week is going to be finding my 'macguffin'. While it isn't - and shouldn't be - the actual motor to the narrative - the way all the characters act will inevitably be influenced by whatever it is. But, bottom line: in the past four days, I've produced nearly 10,000 words more than I would have done otherwise. By the end of the week, I'll have more words in this story than are currently in my entire short story collection. And for that, I can only be grateful. 

Nanowrimo Word Count: 9347

Nanowrimo, Day 2: Heading For A Wall

All throughout today, I've felt exhausted. Like I just want to fall asleep. And it's not even as if I've had a long day at the office. I just met up with a friend who, incredibly, I hadn't seen since about Feburary. We chatted about that, about love lives, and about green eggs and ham (not because we were at a Dr Suess convention, but because it was on the menu, and neither one of us have had it before). And, of course, we talked about nanowrimo. It's inevitable, now. People are going to often ask me over the next 29 days how it's going, and if I've hit today's word count. This is what happens when you constantly put your word count up as your Facebook status update, or on your twitter feed. 

And that, of course, is the whole point. 

I'm about to hit the the first bump in my story. I know what will happen in, say, twenty, thirty or maybe even fifty pages time. At least, vaguely. But I have no idea how to get there. I have no idea ow my character is going to get from where she is right now to the next set piece. Now, given today's exhaustion, this would be the point at which I'd normally decide to sleep on it, and get caught up on some box sets that I still haven't gotten around to watching yet. And that's where the whole insanity of nanowrimo really comes into its own. There's no hiding place. There are thousands of people all across the globe all hacking out their little novels right now. As you read this, there's probably someone within ten miles of you who should be finishing chapter 3. There's every chance that that someone should be you. Normally, if writer's block (which is sort of what I'm about to hit) trips you up, then that can be as good a reason as any to throw in the towel for a couple of days. But then a couple of days can very quickly become a week. After all, real life is very good at getting in the way. But with nanowrimo, if you tweeted that you'd delivered a 1,000 words on day 1, and 700 words on day 2, followed by a storming 3,000 words on day 3 .... Well, people are going to notice if your word count suddenly goes quiet for a day or so. It's sheer ego and embarrassment that can galvanise you to keep up your count. Let's face it, the whole producing a novel in thirty days is a plan of infinite stupidity in the first place, so it can be quite chastening if, once you've committed to it, you then bail out after only a couple of days. Everyone will know. And from now on, whenever you respond to the question 'so, what are you doing at the moment?' with the reply 'well, I'm working on that novel', you will have to accept that your companion is going to smile politely, nod, and change the subject to something else. Like how they're getting promoted. You know, like a grown-up. 

I've already hit a minor bump in the story already. Same problem - I didn't know what my character should do next. That time, it was an easier solve, since I simply wrote my inability to progress the story into the narrative: in other words, I had my character realising that she didn't know what to do next. That clicked something, because she went to ask advice from an old friend (who turned out to be a burlesque dancer, which, a, is so something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had a mild case of writers block, and, b, probably indicates something about where my mind wanders if it doesn't have something to occupy it). I don't want my character to be constantly not knowing what to do next, however - that makes her passive, and she's certainly not that - so I can't use that trick again. One of the major challenges is that I don't yet know why the major incidents of the novel have occurred (there's some Big Bad in the background, but I don't yet know why my characters are mixed in events), but I'm trusting that I'll work that out as the month / novel progresses. 

As to what happens to my main character right now - or what she makes happen - I still have absolutely no idea. I guess there's only one way to find out .. 

Word Count: I forget. But currently I'm ahead of schedule ..