I have finally figured out how to bring the story to a natural close; there are just a lot of details to fill in between here and there. I skipped a section yesterday and poured myself into one area that will really bring up my word count quickly -- it's a scene that requires fast writing and ends up, in a weird and strange way, to start to bring the novel to its close. Although I feel well-satisfied with the story, I doubt my novel will be interesting to anyone but me. But that's okay. I'm not allowing myself to think about readers other than myself much at all. If I do, I'll start stressing too much and find myself freezing up entirely -- something I'm obviously trying to avoid quite strenuously at this point -- I don't have the time to hesitate, much less freeze.
I'm working on the retreat portion now -- when my character leads her church's women's retreat (obviously extremely autobiographical), and I've been able to pull in my own retreat talk for Lake Murray from a few years ago which explains why this portion is ramping up my word count wonderfully well. I'll have to go back and write the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday/Lenten parts and then after the retreat (which occurs during Lent) deal with Holy Week and Easter -- and Easter Sunday is where my novel will end. Watching my character walk through the liturgical year for the first time as an Evangelical Anglican is allowing me to tell my own story through fiction, my original idea when I first started this project over a year ago.
Yes, I have a goodly amount of my word count that I'll be leaving out of my current story -- about 20,000 words that added action and conflict but which took me very far from my original idea of walking my character through the liturgical year, her faith shifting and changing as she welcomes liturgy into her Christian life. I'll save aside the conflict portion in a separate file once I reach my word count goal of 50,000 words by November 30. It's actually an intriguing story, but it wasn't right for this project. The smartest decision I made all month was to jettison 20K words and return to page three of my original story line. I'm writing this book for myself, not for public consumption, but I allowed myself to be swayed by marketability of all things. Plain stupidity. I'm just glad I caught myself and was able to back up and start again. I actually have half of my current 40,000 words in my "conflict" story and half after jettisoning that story and returning to my original story for approximately 20,000 words. So now I'm building on the majority of my word count in the "right" story.
So if I can (somehow, someway) finish this challenge, with all my dithering, mistakes, and lack of imagination, I'm sure that any writer worth her ilk can definitely manage to "win" NaNoWriMo, especially when "winning" simply consists of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. It's all about quantity, not quality. It's in subsequent drafts that I'll work on quality -- and I much, much prefer messing with an existing draft than dredging one up in the first place. It's the editor in me, I suppose....
So wish me luck as I enter the final three days of the NaNoWriMo Challenge! To quote the Little Engine That Could: "I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...." I hope I can finish, anyway....
1 comment:
Yay! You go girl. I reckon you can get it done! (You can sleep again on Tuesday.)
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