Tuesday, November 21, 2006

NaNoWriMo continues


I've been plugging away at Nano Wrimo for a while now. I haven't written every day, but I've kept up with my word count by writing a lot on days I do write. It has been an interesting experience to work on my own novel. On Sunday night I exported my novel to a text format, and found out that I had written over 120 pages of double-spaced fiction! It was a milestone to realize how much I had written. Reaching the milestone was the result of a 4400 word-in-two-hours sprint on Sunday evening. I've probably never written so many words in one sitting before.

I also have a new respect for successful authors. It is difficult to write. I have had a general outline of events that need to happen in my plot, but I was having trouble getting to them. So Sunday night when I started writing I go an inspiration to shake things up. I also needed some action to get myself out of the pit of endless dialogue. (it's amazing how easy it is to fall into lengthy, pointless dialogue!) But in the course of that brainstorm, I wrote one good action filled chapter, and then when I got done, I realized I had fundamentally changed the circumstances that would lead to the next plot-point in my plan. So that's why I'm sitting her blogging about my writing instead of writing. Because my inspiration derailed my plan and now I have to continue to adapt to get back to (or ignore?) my previous plan. It makes one wonder how much of good fiction is planned and how much just comes in the writing and has to be cleaned up later. I guess that is where editing comes in. I don't even want to think about editing! Fortunately NaNoEdMo doesn't come until February or March.

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