NaNoWriMo 2010, Week One

No, I don't plan on making a habit of posting this late at night, but, as this marks exactly the end of the first week of NaNoWriMo, it seemed a good time.

First of all, I suppose it's obligatory in any post about an ongoing NaNoWriMo project to mention the current word count. 23,880 words. Though I think OpenOffice.org is also counting dashes, so the actual word count is slightly lower, but, eh, I don't pepper my writing with so many dashes that the count won't be in the right ballpark.

In fact, what the hey, I've now gone ahead and stuck a widget to show my current word count on the right side of the page. (I'll take it back down after NaNoWriMo.)

So. About my NaNoWriMo story.

A couple months back, I finished reading Moby Dick for the first time. (I'd started it before, but hadn't gotten all the way through; this time I did.) Notwithstanding some troublesome bits like Melville's confident explanations of why whaling didn't really endanger any whale species, overall I enjoyed the book. And it gave me some ideas...

The whaling ship was an interesting setting for a story. A relatively small, self-contained space, with a relatively small, self-contained cast of characters, but nevertheless one that, as evidenced not only by the story of the Pequod in Moby Dick but by the stories told by the crews of other whaling ships the Pequod encountered, lent itself to a broad range of possible story situations. Now... what if I put a bit of a fantasy spin on it? What if instead of whales, the ship was hunting, say... gods?

That was my jumping-off point; I thought that could make for an interesting story. I hadn't even originally been thinking of NaNoWriMo when I came up with the story, but then when I remembered that NaNoWriMo was in fact only a couple of months away, I realized this story would be ideal for that, and I set about trying to flesh out the story in whatever free time I could spare.

While I had taken inspiration from the setting from Moby Dick, I consciously wanted to avoid imitating Moby Dick's plot; I didn't want my story to just be Moby Dick with magic. So I tried to consider what other stories could be told in such a setting, especially with the fantasy elements added. Before I started writing, I hoped to have the main plot fleshed out in some detail, along with a few major subplots I could interweave with it. I also hoped to come up with a complete list of characters, with their physical descriptions, personality traits, and positions on the crew, and the role they played in the story.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I didn't, apparently, make enough time to get everything planned out in as much detail as I wanted. By the dawn of November 1, I did have the main story in mind, and especially the last few chapters plotted out in some detail (all the better to be able to foreshadow them and to hang any necessary Chekhovian rifles). But I only had a vague idea or two for subplots. And as for the characters, I had descriptions and story roles for some of the characters, but only the main character had an actual name.

Still, while I wasn't nearly as prepared as I wanted to be, this was enough to start writing. I could make up and fill in any names I needed as I went. And that's pretty much what I've been doing, although I admit I haven't been altogether happy with most of the names -- but then, coming up with just the right character names is something I tend to obsess about possibly more than I should. And anyway, this can always be fixed later. If I come up with better names while I'm doing rewrites, a little find and replace can put matters to rights.

NaNoWriMo, of course, recommends a goal of at least 1,667 words per day. The problem here, though, is that that assumes you're working on a novel of 50,000 words total. I expect my novel, Ichor, to come out to eighty or ninety thousand words, which means about 3,000 words per day, or more if I hope to finish early enough to have time to write a shorter young adult novel afterward. Still, the first few days I went along at a pretty good clip. I completed 3,640 words the first day, very close to four thousand the next, and 4,252 the day after that.

Then, alas, things slowed down. Thursday the fourth was a busy day, and I didn't get much time to write; I only managed 2,332 words, more than the recommended daily goal but less than my personal goal. Friday I figured I should have plenty of time to make up for it... and I would have, but there I hit a snag. I had reached a point in the story where I really needed to do some setting up for the subplots, and I still didn't have those worked out. So I thought about the subplots, and in the meantime I wrote around what I was missing, skipping ahead a bit to write some parts I wouldn't need the subplots for. Saturday, I was still in much the same situation; I'd had an idea I liked for one subplot, but there was a second subplot I still needed to firm up... I more or less knew what the subplot itself was going to involve, in fact, but didn't know which characters were going to be involved in it, and I needed to know that before continuing. So, again, I skipped around a bit; I filled in some parts that had to do with that first subplot of which I now knew the details, and skipped some bits I'd need to work out the second subplot for. Still, that meant Friday and Saturday were very slow days, with 1,964 and 1,670 words, respectively... again, in both cases above NaNoWriMo's recommended word count goals (though in the latter case just barely), but well below my personal goals.

But then, finally, I managed to get it all worked out. I pretty much know what's going to happen in the subplots now, and who's going to be involved, and I think I've pretty much got the cast list down. So, today, the floodgates opened again, and I managed to get out 6,028 words—the best I've done so far, though I still think I could do better.

So. I'm still definitely on track to finish my fantasy novel by the end of November. Whether I'll also have time to write the young adult novel I have in mind remains to be seen. But I've still got 23 days left to go...