Month: November 2014

The home stretch! It’s been a long and productive month that has flown by. By the time I post this, I should have hit that magical 50,000 words mark. Hooray me! But just because I have ‘won’ NaNo doesn’t mean the book is done. Far from it as there is still a ton of stuff I have yet to write including the beginning for one of the main characters. At least the end is done and most of the middle bits.

As the month has gone on, I have noticed the writing gremlins sneaking up on me telling me that what I’m writing is terrible. They’re also telling me to imagine all the work I’m going to have to do to make it coherent let alone good. As if those bastards know anything, they think it’s their place to second guess certain scenes and the overall story concept. Why are they asking such irritating questions such as: Do you really want to have two main characters that eventually meet and merge into one plotline? Is the location and time period one that anyone will care about? How is the story any different from what’s out there?

Mental fatigue has made it hard to shut them up which has caused me to struggle more and more each day with focus. At times I can see the end of being done with the rough draft by the end of this year but when I look over what I’ve planned that still needs to be done, it feels like that may not be a realistic goal. Yet I need to keep in mind this is just a rough draft. The real work, and for me, fun, begins with the revisions. I knew going into this that there were going to be horrible gaps in logic, that the characters were going to be all over the place (both physically and emotionally), and that there would need to be a lot of detail work to be done.

Overall, my second NaNoWriMo has gone much smoother than my first. For all the reservations and doubts I’ve developed about the story itself the last couple of weeks, I still very much believe in it. Truly this is just the beginning of a very long journey ahead for me.