I’ve been working on the tattoo story collection I discussed a few posts ago. It’s been going very well, but it appears I am short of the 25,000 word count mark by about 11k. That tends to happen when you get new freelance clients every night for the first couple weeks, then have to go to a 3-day conference for your real job.
The main reason I wanted to do National Novel Writing Month was because I had a project I was crazy excited about, and I wanted to start getting it down before I lost that initial excitement. Perhaps more importantly, though, it took me seven years to write my last book, and I don’t want it to take another seven years to write my second. NaNoWriMo is great for me, because it forces me to find the time – often time I don’t have – to write something, anything, any day. As a result, I’ve written on the city bus, in coffee shops during meetups, on my lunch breaks, while watching college football recaps, you name it.
Part of the problem I’ve had with NaNoWriMo is that the process needs to be fast, and my process is typically much slower. I’m a big edit-as-I-go kind of person; it’s how I’ve always been and why I think my editing phase is a little easier. It’s difficult for me to write something I know I don’t really like, am going to have to change later, and just leave it and move on. It may prove useful though, because when I do come back to this in December to start editing (yes, I am an optimist), I’ll have a little more dramatic distance than I typically have when I edit as I write. No process is ever going to be perfect, though, so I guess I’ll take the productivity in exchange for the rework I’ll inevitably have to do later.
It’s likely that I won’t get to 50,000 on time, but I’m not overly concerned. I’m happy with the progress I am making and I think the prose is really well done so far. I’ve also been getting some great feedback from my meetup group members, which I will feature again soon.
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