So You've Written 50,000 Words - Now What?

Hi.  I didn't bother writing any blog posts for the majority of November because I spent the month participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, the goal of which is to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.

And I did that.  I did just that.  I updated my word count every day, meaning I wrote every day for thirty days, all for one singular project.  This isn't the first time I've done this, but it's the first time I've done it where I think I might actually do something with what I ended up with.  Which feels weird - who am I to share this story?  Who am I to assume anyone will want anything to do with it?  I don't know.  When I start thinking like that, I try to put those thoughts aside and just do the thing anyway.

But if that ever happens, it's a while off.

See, the story took on many forms and went all over place over the course of the month.  I started out writing it one way, restructured it, even went from first to third person narration by the end of the month.  It was thirty days of exploring what this story could be, and I think I more or less know what I want it to be now.  I have a lot of material from last month that I can still use - it just needs to be reworked a bit.  But there's still a lot of material I don't have, that I still need to write.

This story has changed in so many ways.  I started planning it in May, tried to start writing it a few times between then and November, and have deleted several versions.  But that's all a part of the process.  It's sort of annoying - I wish I could just write everything down and make it all as clear as it is in my head, but it doesn't work like that.  There's these moments where something clicks into place, and that's exciting.  Discovering these characters and their dynamic has been one of the most exciting parts about this story for me, and that's usually how it starts - not with a plot, but with a character who I want to explore.  This story has a few of those, and I get to figure them out.  I get to figure out their world.

I've had to kill a lot of darlings with this story already, too.  I wanted it to be in first person and tried so hard to make that work, but I just don't think it will, not with the story I'm telling, so third it is (and I hate to admit that it's made it so much easier.  It's not that the main character didn't have a strong voice, it was that he was bogging the narrative down with all his thoughts, and as much as I want him to come through, I've also got to tell a story here.)  There are lines I have loved that are now lost to the ages because they ultimately didn't fit.  Plot points have vanished in favor of streamlining things.  And that's all okay - it's all a part of telling what is, hopefully, a story worth telling.

Anyways, that's why I was gone for a while.  Had a story to tell.  Still working on telling it.

There's also a National Poetry Writing Month in April, I think, where you write a poem a day.  I want to do that as well, but hopefully it won't keep me away from the silly little blog like NaNoWriMo did.  But I'm glad I took that time to focus on this story because I think there might be something there.

But, uh.  I think I need to step away from it for a few days.