NaNoWriMo: Week Three
So, supposedly Week Three is where things are supposed to start coming together. This is where the NaNo journey gets better. Although I’m not quite seeing it yet … I’m still struggling through mid-novel insecurity, and the negligence of many other areas of my life for the sake of this novel is beginning to have an effect. My dear husband finally cleaned the bathroom tonight. I finally walked my dog and got new tires. The dishes remain undone, and this blog post is being written at the last possible moment so I can still cross it off my list for Monday.
More than with my other NaNo novels, this one has me already thinking about what I’ll do in revisions before the first draft is done. I’m finally starting to get a handle on the prince’s character after writing him for a week, thanks to a conversation over pizza with my husband. Now I’ll need to go back to make his behavior so far consistent with what I’ve discovered.
This week has also brought me the most explicit “love” scene I’ve ever written (yes, “love” is being used as a stand-in for a more explicit word ;)). In the traditional fairy tale, Rapunzel becomes pregnant with twins while she’s still locked in the tower, so we can figure it out. And although I’m usually a “pan-away” sort of author with such scenes, that wasn’t going to get me a whole lot of words. So I spelled it out. And I’ll probably go back and “unspell” most of it later.
I’m still struggling with whether a single-person point of view is best for telling this story. Initially, I thought about doing it from both Rapunzel’s and the witch’s perspectives, and now I’m thinking that I’d like to give the prince a chance to say his piece, too. There are certain things that just will never be revealed through Rapunzel, since her experience of the story is rather limited (the whole locked-in-a-tower thing.) On the other hand, I think there’s a lot to be gained in such a limited perspective, both for the way it challenges the writer and the way that it keeps the tension higher for the reader (what ARE those other characters doing?). So, if I get desperate for words, I may play around with some scenes from other PoV’s, but I’m hoping to try all 50,000 words from Rapunzel first and then take it from there.
Now that NaNo is over halfway finished, my momentum has slowed and I’m usually writing the bare minimum most days rather than the more ideal 2,000 words-per-day I started out with (so glad I built that cushion.) But I’m still on-target as far as word-count goes for this part of the journey, even though my progress has slowed.
And now that the end is in sight, I’m looking forward to doing the following things when November is over …
- Writing in my journal
- Writing book reviews
- Sleeping
- Earning more money (because my finances is one of the areas that’s taken a hit this month)
- Using my “get out of fiction writing free” card again (which I usually invoke on days that I do other projects to further my writing goals, like blogging)
Oh, I can still invoke that card, but it comes at a high word-count price, so I use it sparingly.
A few things I hope to take with me when NaNoWriMo is over:
- A life that continues to prioritize my writing (currently, “word count” is in my top three goals for the day every day)
- The delicious feeling of being immersed and inspired in a world of your own creation
- A shiny new novel!