Nearing the (first) finish line
NaNoWriMo is successfully over! I hit my 50,003 word count early on November 30 and have not yet gone back to write more. That’s okay – my goal is the end of December, and both Jake and the rest of my lovely cheerleading corner are going to keep me to that. I’m only four chapters (three and an epilogue, really) away from wrapping up draft one and crossing the first of many finish lines with A God Grown Old!
I’m really excited and encouraged right now. This book has real potential, especially for what it is – a simple enough story with a fun cast of characters. I’ll of course need to go back and retool a lot, but as it stands, this is a pretty solid and satisfying first draft. There are parts that I cried while writing, parts I grew angry about, and scenes I flew through because I could see them so clearly (see: drug-induced vision in a cavern. Shhhhh!). So, the plan is to charge through the rest of this draft (my guess is around 15k words more), then leave it alone for a month or two while I focus on something else for a little while. Then it will be time to edit!
The joys of NaNoWriMo
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.
Baby steps
I couldn’t help but feel a little lazy on the long weekend, so on Monday I finally opened up my documents for A God Grown Old again. And what do you know: I really like what I’ve written so far. Even if a lot of it goes by the wayside, as the first drafts of openings tend to do, I’ve gotten a lot of character setup and foundation out of the way, and that’s really what I need to catapult into the main action. I managed to write another 1300 or so, pushing past the block I’ve been ignoring since… Gah, dare I admit it? Since MAY. Yup, the document hadn’t been modified since a solid four months ago. I felt great shame.
I don’t know if this is the start of a consistent writing schedule, but since I’m trying to focus on getting a draft down instead of perfecting it, perhaps these baby steps will turn into a bit of a trot.
Making time
Heyyyy, all. I know it’s been far too long since I’ve posted here and that sucks. I’ve been severely neglecting my dream and that’s just not cool.
I’m still frequently looking at images for inspiration (as you can tell, I’ve not been entirely inactive on this blog), but in terms of writing I’ve really abandoned the project.
I have been working on other things, but when I’ve made promises…well.
So: please stay tuned, and I will be coming back to this shortly. I’ve got a few more pressing projects coming down the pipe that need to be out of the way first, and then it’s back to A God Grown Old, because what I have could be great and I don’t want to lose it.
Thanks for sticking with me, friends.
