NaNoWriMo Winner 2008
I finished NaNoWriMo about 6:30 this morning, with a hundred words or so over the 50,000 goal and my story wrapped up.
The characters are inconsistently drawn, you can drive an SUV through the plot holes, the dialogue is often clunky, and I only found the narrator’s voice in the last few chapters. Nonetheless, I think I have something worth revising. It made me laugh, it made me cry, I was sleep-deprived.
It was a fantastic and frustrating experience.
I’ve been sporadic about writing this past week, and I’m about 3,800 words behind schedule, but I’m making up ground. I’m running into plot cul-de-sacs. When I had trouble coming up with something to write tonight, I had my main character receive letters from his siblings. Those were good for about 700 words, but more importantly, it kicked my brain into gear.
I think I’ll come out of this with something worth revising, but it will need major reconstructive surgery.
Anyway, the stats:
Today’s word count: 2,314
Total word count to date: 22,836
…though I’m writing this on Day 11.
My scenes are getting longer, but that’s because I’m having a hard time finding a way out of them. They end without resolution, and abruptly.
On the other hand, my protagonist (whom we have been following from age 5) is now in 9th grade, so I have a lot to say. As a nerd, and more importantly, as a self-righteous, arrogant prig, I did not have a happy high school experience. I brought a lot of it on myself — but when adults do the kinds of things to one another that teenagers do, they go to prison. If my experience was anywhere close to typical, we all leave adolescence with PTSD. (I just remembered: I need to talk about zits.)
I’m rambling. Maybe to put off yesterday’s stats, which are not impressive. Here they are:
Yesterday’s word count:739
Total word count to date: 17,759
Today’s word count:3,403
Total word count to date:17,020
I had a productive session at the write-in this evening. I think I actually created some good scenes.
On the other hand, I once thought I had won the lottery, but when I woke up I was still broke.
Today’s word count: 1,834
Total word count to date: 13,617
I know the next major plot point I want to reach in my novel, I just can’t decide which of three paths to take to get there. How I get from A to B will influence the development of all the major characters.
I’ll sleep on it, and return to the dilemma (trilemma?) tomorrow with a fresh lack of clarity.
I took yesterday off for important personal reasons (poker), which put me a little behind, but I’m back on track now.
Today’s word count: 2,120
Total word count to date: 11,783
I keep thinking I know where the story is going, and it keeps going somewhere else.
Recently started: Created Writing: Poetry from New Angles, by Paul Agostino
Recently finished: The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine
I took yesterday off to help save the country. Today, I’m back at it. I had to work late, though, so didn’t get in as much writing as I’d hoped.
Today’s word count: 1,008
Total word count to date: 9,663
Today’s word count: 1,762
Total word count to date: 8,655
I’m taking tomorrow off so I can watch the election returns obsessively. On Wednesday I’ll return to my novel with either a renewed sense of creative vigor, or a desire to lose myself in an imaginary world.
Today’s word count: 4,670
Total word count to date: 6,893
My characters are developing themselves in directions I never envisioned or intended. They insist on being who they are, not who I want them to be, and doing what they want, not what I want them to do.
If I had plotted out this novel before starting, I’d be really ticked off.
The prose still stinks, though.
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