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Day 4 - 10K, Puzzle Pieces

Whatever happens to this story, I've already found my first attempt at NaNoWriMo very enlightening. It's a method. It's learning a new skill. It's looking at the writing process in a wholly different manner. It's not only staying with one story for a while, thinking about it while you do the dishes, brush your teeth and before you fall asleep, but also letting it take over, providing you with clues, thoughts and ideas, spurred on by just about anything. I love it!

I've decided not to write a blog entry for every single NaNo day - not unless there's something to share. Yesterday, on day 3, I decided to devote some of my time to construct a plan for a certain number of chapters and the things that I had come up with so far that needed to happen in a particular order. I got to chapter 13 before realising I still didn't know how it would end just yet.

Today, I had one of those lightbulb moments and finished what looks like to be an okay chapter division. And when I say 'okay', I mean nothing more than okay. Because at the same time that I'm writing this chapter planning, I realise that right now, the only thing that counts - from a NaNo perspective - is to get 50,000 words together. And right now, I realise that in typing 50K, I will probably manage to get a really rough draft of a story that will include the main plot ideas but need so much polishing and editing later, that it might look wholly different by the time I'm done.

I'm trying to stick with the NaNo spirit for now. JUST WRITE. Get down the gist of it and worry about the proper words later. I need to drop hints in early chapters about things I intend to include later, and I think that will take some going back and forth to make it work. 

I'm not expecting this 'novel' to be a work of pure perfection. I know that it won't be. But I do know it will be an entire story, with a proper end and all. Which is more than I've ever managed to get down on paper. And, as NaNo-ers say, I'll worry about the editing and polishing later.

Whatever happens to this story, I've already found my first attempt at NaNoWriMo very enlightening. I've never sat myself down before to plot and plan an entire story from beginning to end. Never thougth of it that way. Always figured I'd sit down and type and write an entire novel from beginning to end. I know how stupid that sounds, trust me. I've written a thesis at university that was all about planning before I could write anything. I should know better.

But this is good fun. It's a method. It's learning a new skill. It's looking at the writing process in a wholly different manner. It's like piecing together a puzzle. It's not only staying with one story for a while, thinking about it while you do the dishes, brush your teeth and before you fall asleep, but also letting it take over, providing you with clues, thoughts and ideas, spurred on by just about anything. I love it.

And today, on November 4th, I reached 10K. Just like that.

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