NaNoWriMo 2010, Week Three

And so ends week three of NaNoWriMo, and so I guess it's time for another update as to how I'm doing.

As I mentioned in the last post, as far as NaNoWriMo itself, I've already "won". I'm well past 50,000 words, which is the official goal of NaNoWriMo. But again, my real goal isn't just to "win" NaNoWriMo; it's to finish the novel. So how are things going with that?

As of the end of week two, I was rather seriously behind schedule. I knew I'd really have to kick things up if I wanted to get the projected 100,000 words of my first draft done by the end of the month. Well, as it turns out, I did. I started the week badly, with 2,631 on Monday and 2,196 on Tuesday, well above the 1,667 NaNoWriMo recommends but well below what I'd need for my personal goal. Wednesday I did better, with 3,799 words. Unfortunately, though that would have been fine had I still been on schedule, I was behind enough that that still was below the daily average I'd need to finish on time.

The next day, though, I got 4,949 words, which did exceed what I needed. And while Friday I had a poor day with only 1,779 words, I managed 4,403 words on Saturday, and then yesterday was my best day so far, with 7,669 words. As it currently stands, then, my total so far is 66,464 words; in order to finish 100,000 words before the end of the month, I'll need to complete an average of about 3,726 words a day for the next nine days. I think that should be doable...

Of course, though, the 100,000 words is just a projected estimate anyway. It may end up a little longer, or a little shorter. In fact, it's looking now like it's more likely to end up a little longer... I've still got a lot of plot left to get through, and I don't know that I can fit it all into the 33000-odd words that would leave me. (And to think when I started I was worried I might not have enough story to fill the book, and might need to come up with more subplots!) However, I'm not sure that a first draft of 100,000 words will really lead to a final draft of 80,000 to 90,000 words. Yes, I'm going to cut the entire first chapter, and yes, I'll no doubt be making a lot more cuts along the way and tightening up my prose, but it seems dubious that that's really going to mean a ten to twenty percent reduction in the word count. Particularly since I may need to add a few bits, too, to make sure some things get explained.

Still... well, I guess we'll see where the word count ends up. As long as the final draft turns out anywhere between 85,000 and 100,000 words, I should be okay, really. Much longer or shorter than that, and I'll have to worry.

One thing that's interesting to see as the writing progresses is how undecided plot points tend to work themselves out. Sometimes things come up out of the blue that I hadn't planned on, but that end up seeming natural. The protagonist gets into a conversation with a character that I had thought was fully human, and I suddenly decide to make the character have some demonic ancestry. (Which will involve, when I do the rewrites, a few minor changes earlier in the novel, particularly in his physical description when he's first introduced in Chapter 3—that is, in what is now Chapter 3 but will be Chapter 2 after I delete what is now Chapter 1.)

More to the point, though, it seems to often happen that there are some points in the story I haven't quite made sense of yet that, as I get to them, I see how to resolve using details that had come up in the story that hadn't been part of my original plans. Most recently, I was worried about how the protagonist would solve two particular mysteries. I knew he had to figure out that one character was planting evidence to incriminate another, and I knew he had to figure out that another character was behind some disappearances, but I had no idea how either one would happen. But then it came to me that I had unknowingly laid the groundwork for the revelation in two events that had spontaneously come up as I was writing them, that I could use not only to lead up to the first revelation, but to connect the two revelations to each other and make the story more coherent.

Moreover, there was one character I knew needed a little more time "onscreen" before his demise... he'd only had one big scene so far, really, and he had something going for him, a little project of his own that tied in to some of the themes of the story, that I wanted to reinforce before he was killed off. I hadn't quite decided, though, how I was going to bring him up again. Then there came up a natural opportunity to write a scene involving this character, and I didn't realize till after I'd written the scene that not only had I brought this character in again and had him talk more about his goals as I'd wanted to, but I'd done it in a way that also nicely foreshadowed and resonated with another character's plans that were going to be revealed soon.

That seems to happen all the time in writing. Unknowingly laying groundwork that later seems to be exactly what I need. Were I mystically inclined, I'd say it's because the story is already there, and I'm just discovering it. Romantic as that sounds, though, I don't really believe it. I think it's more that as I write and introduce more details I just end up with more to draw from, so it's natural that some of it ends up being useful... and maybe even because I know where the story has to go, so I'm subconsciously preparing the way, even if I don't consciously realize the full purpose of some of what I write at the time.

Anyway, though, regardless of the reasons, it's nice to see a story that started out as a few somewhat half-baked notes and plans gradually come together into a coherent and well connected whole. Oh, obviously there'll be a lot of revision and editing to do during the rewrites, but even so... even in the first draft the story is turning out a lot more nicely structured than it has any right to be given the sparseness of my outline.

Now to just see if I can bring the thing to an end without going too far over the word count I want...