Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Nanowrimo Day 2, still chuggling on

My Nanowrimo novel continues. I've written another 1,700 words. So far so good.
In writing this year's novel, I tried a new approach. Instead of just writing my 1,666 words a day, no matter where it leads me, I structure my writing around chapters. Each day brings a new movement to the story. So if I make it through Nov. 30, I will have 30 chapters. I decided to do this because in the past I would find myself hung up, unable to move away from the setting, character or idea I was working on. How do I make the transition to the next one? If I had lots of time, I could have just worked over what I'd already written and see where it should go. Doing things by chapters, I'm forced to work on a new thought each day and each day complete that thought.
So today's chapter was the world's largest infodump. It was 1,700 words on the back story of a giant monster crossing America. My characters live in the after-effects of that crossing. If I revise this novel, this chapter would be the first thing to be edited out. I would much rather have the background exposed naturally through the course of the novel. But in doing this, it helped me get a stronger notion of what has happened and how I shall proceed from here.
Tomorrow, it's back to my main characters, including introducing a new one.

2 comments:

Shaun said...

Good luck with it. I already try to write as much as I can each day, so I know how hard it is. One word at a time, that's my motto.

Brian said...

Thanks for the good wishes. That's part of the reason I do this, I want to get more in the habit of writing every day (of course, I'd rather be doing a couple hundred good words than 2,000 crappy ones, but habits must start somewhere). My worst problem in writing is my lack of self-discipline.