I look forward to November every year. It’s not my favorite month – I mean, December has my birthday, plus Christmas, plus ultimate cuddle weather. But November is NaNoWriMo month. If you’ve managed to have a Tumblr and don’t know what this is, congratulations, you are probably not scarred by much on the interwebz. But I digress.
I am just under 500 words away from the halfway mark for NaNo – 25,000 words. Add to that the 8000 words I had prior to the start of November, and A God Grown Old is sitting at a pretty 33k. In other words, I’m too far now to turn back. Even better: I don’t want to turn back! Ever since introducing Cleo, who is turning out to be one of my favorite characters, the story has bantered and cantered along nicely.
I can already see where my weak points are: character growth, consistency of style, and too much emo. And dialogue, always. The great thing about those being the big weaknesses is that they’re fully editable. In round two, character arcs and style will become clear and I can hack away what doesn’t work and round out what does. Emo can be chopped. Dialogue can be spoken aloud until it sounds right.
Right now, it’s about putting my head down and writing, despite the myriad distractions coming my way right now: a bigger workload at my office job (meaning less time to write on the clock), purchasing a new car, holidays, all that good end-of-the-year stuff. That’s what NaNo has always been good for, and will continue to be as long as I’m writing.