It's November 14 and I've reached the 50,000 words marker in my NaNo project. I'm incredibly proud to have made it, and so quickly too. And yes, just as I predicted, my story isn't finished yet. Which means, neither am I.
If I have one #writetip, it would be the one that is part and parcel of the NaNo experience: don't overthink it, just write. Plan ahead, build a skeleton from head to toe, and then start dressing it up. Underwear, socks, shirt, jeans, sweater, coat and shoes. Worry about all the accessories and the hairdo later.
It's close to midnight as I type this little update and I've had a rough and very broken night yesterday, which means I want to go to sleep. I've shut down my Word document at the count of 55,031 words and I am looking forward to writing more tomorrow. If I can figure out how to start connecting some of my dots in the right way, that is.
Right now, I have these dots. They need connecting. I'm worried that A) any reader will be far from surprised once my characters join these dots, because I've been spelling it out too much, B) I'm having these characters connect certain dots way too quickly because of the time constraints within the novel, and C) even once the dots are connected, it doesn't pack even half the punch I wish it would.
I think one of my edit rounds in the future should focus solely on packing punches, wrapping them up all nice and camouflaged. I think this story should be more exciting than it is right now, although I wonder how much suspense you can build up in one week. I worry that the flow of information to my characters is way too passive, although I don't have a way out of that yet.
My main goal after reaching 50K is to reach the end of the story. Write everything down from beginning to end, save it, copy it, save it elsewhere, and just leave it be for a while. Get back to my day job, so to speak, with nothing more than a notebook close by if I ever get hit with a good idea out of the blue. I've heard plenty of published authors say that editing is almost a job in itself, and that sometimes it takes even well-experienced authors twenty edits to get to that sparkling, polished manuscript.
So while I try to get my brain used to the idea of finishing this story within the next few days without having any plans to go back and edit it any time soon, I bid you all a good, inspirational and most of all relaxing night.