NaNo Update (Writer Wednesday comes a day late)

Well, this has been a mixed bag, as evidenced in part by my post being a day late (look for Photo Friday on Saturday, too). 

Of course, having pretty much a week with the house full of company added extra challenges. But every day I was able to write at least a few hundred words, and some days I clobbered the word counts, so at this point I am still well ahead of my target, if not keeping up quite the level of over-achieving I was at the beginning of the month.

So my writing time has been up and down. What about the actual writing? You know, the way the story is going and all that?

Ups. Way up there.

Downs. Way down there.

 

That's been a bit up and down as well. I have a lot of big holes in the story that need to be filled. And that turns out to be a good thing, because at the moment I seem to have wrapped up the basic story line at about 65,000 words--well short of my usual 80K for a cozy mystery. We'll see how close I come; 70K is still in the ballpark. Of course, I went and set my NaNo goal as 80K by Dec. 10, so I might technically lose this as I doubt the book will reach that length, except maybe in revisions. Guess I'll throw in some short stories and claim the prize. That might be good: I'm always saying I'm going to do more short fiction, then not doing it. Maybe a NaNo approach to a 5,000-word short will help me meet that goal.

Tag those targets!

Which brings me to the other point: NaNoWriMo goals are nonsense. Or, at least, they are completely arbitrary, and I would guess don't match the ideal for much of any books. Which is not to run down NaNo, but should serve as a reminder that this whole big hyped thing is... a tool. If it helps you write with discipline, go for it. If it stresses you out, then maybe it's not for you. I do like that they've gone to letting you set your own targets, both words and finish date. I'm not sure how that will work, so we'll see (I shouldn't have set 80K, I realize now. The target should be below the most likely word count).

There's nothing magic about NaNo, and sometimes I think I don't really want to encourage everyone and her uncle to write a novel, anyway. I know what the agents and publishers think of it. I know y'all know this, but let me stress: Do. Not. Send your book to anyone on Dec. 1. NaNo doesn't produce a novel. If you are lucky, it produces a messy draft.

Oh, yeah. Because that "write it fast and don't look back" approach is not bad for producing the crappy first draft that Anne Lamott advocates (me, too). But that sure as heck isn't a novel.

Anyway, good luck hitting your targets, whatever they may be. And good luck with the editing!

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2023    
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