Core Writing: NaNoWriMo and Me

Okay, so I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to cross the 50,000 word mark in my new story before NaNoWriMo ends at midnight on the 30th of November.

I knew it would take me longer than a month to write the first draft of this story before I started NaNoWriMo. (I started anyway because all my friends are doing it and it’s a lot of fun.) Now that I’m more than half way through my NaNo days, I’m quite certain I won’t cross 50K in the next week and a half.  I’ve just crossed the 10, 000 word mark. Seeing as this is a story where writing more than 2,000 words a day leaves my brain feeling a bit like a wad of cotton balls, I can’t see the pace speeding up. So, I won’t be done by November 30th. I won’t get a ‘winner’ badge this year. But I’ll have a new story. One I’ve procrastinated on for a long time because the ‘whole’ story hasn’t landed in my head like most do. It’s a one step forward at a time, punctuated by pauses, kind of story.

Will I finish the story? Yes, of course. I figure that by December 30th I should have the first draft down. While in the past I may have been tempted to push and rush and force this story to progress faster, I know that won’t work for this story.

This project is bringing out a different writer in me. My characters do not have names. It kind of works, too. While I wrote the first few plot points, I couldn’t figure out why I seemed to have so much of the storyline down, but still be so close to the beginning in terms of word count. Was I writing a short story by accident? Then last night I realized I am writing the core of the story. The muse has been feeding me the story’s core. Once that is down, I’ll have to go back and flesh out the story’s bystanders. Add more details. It’s interesting. Never before have I written a story this way. I sure hope my muse is still looking over my shoulder when it comes to fleshing out the core.