[Looks around.]
Um, hi. It’s nice to be back. Been a while. How are you all doing?
So yesterday I started my sixth NaNoWriMo story in six years. I’ve won every year I’ve played but twice I didn’t actually ‘finish’ the novels I was writing. The first one (my third novel) just kind of petered out because I was pantsing too much, had no idea where it was going to go or how it would get there. I’ve thought about it often ever since because I love the story (it’s a first contact tale) and the characters. I’ll get back to it eventually.
The other NaNovel I didn’t finish was the one from last year. At 56,000 words I gave up. There were too many issues with it and I was focused on the book from the previous year (my fourth if you’re trying to keep track). That story was so good and the feedback that came back was excellent and I spent time editing it and polishing and revising and re-writing and everything one is supposed to do to a novel. This year it’s spent time out on submission (where it currently is) and I’m collecting rejections.
Last year’s book was a sequel to that one. It’s also the story I’m re-writing from page one this year. I changed the POV and added some really sinister villains and figured out HOW to tell the story that I wanted to tell. It simply took me longer than I thought because I wasn’t totally finished with the first one in the series. (Well, I’m not sure it’s a series yet. As of this writing it’s a book with one sequel. We’ll see.) Anyway.
Because of circumstances, I didn’t get to start writing until Friday evening November 1st. And it was a bit of a struggle. Normally I’m a morning writer so that probably contributed but I think it was really just nerves. Once I got past the first thousand words things seemed to go better. Today (Saturday) I knocked out 2600+ words really quickly and most of them were all right, a few were really good and some will definitely be edited out.
But the point is that the flow came back. And it came back strong, like a Colorado river in springtime. Lots of whitewater. This year will be different for me because I’m going to have to spend more time writing in the evenings rather than the morning because of my job. I’m okay with that but I’m hoping it’s not going to be a real struggle. I suspect not because I’ve got a lot of practice writing. Once upon a time I could tell you how many words I’ve written but not any more. It’s gotta be near a million, but I don’t know.
As I write this, I’m anxious to get back to writing on the novel (it’s called The Silent Well if I didn’t mention that earlier) and I’m hoping to get another 500 or 1,000 words down before I go to bed. So I’m going to sign off here to eat some dinner and try to dig back in.