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Second Wind - NaNoWriMo Day 5

11/5/2014

1 Comment

 
Pictureimage by Dominik Martin
It's like night and day looking at what my brain was capable of tonight versus yesterday. Had to do some backtracking, but that can happen when the ol' noodle feels like an old noodle. The long and short of it is that I wrote myself into a corner. I veered off of the outline - which I'm not usually opposed to - but then had my MC flopping around on the floor barely conscious and there was absolutely no reason for him to recover from this state because for anyone involved to decide to let him stay on would just be crazy. And, I mean, I am working with Wonderland so a little madness is permissible, but there's a difference between a bit crazy and forcing things to happen just because. So I backed up a little, trying to figure out how we got into this mess in the first place, and then promptly realized that his whole plan from the get go was so flawed that by following through with it he kind of had flopping-around-unconsciously-only-to-be tossed-back-to-square-one coming to him. So clearly we needed a better plan from the get-go. And considering that he is a Detective, I would hope that he would be capable to piecing together a plan while considering the consequences of his actions. Basically he just left himself way to vulnerable when he had zero reason to. Plus he had to leave the guy with all of the information outside because, once again, logic dictated that if he was a known trouble-maker that was already officially banned from the high security establishment, he wouldn't be allowed to just stroll in. 

I really should have noticed these red flags before committing them into type, but I blame sleepy brain. Thankfully not everything I wrote from before is rubbish. I may have to swap some scenes around, but I can worry about that later when it's revision time. 

In other news, I think I rediscovered something about a character. And by that I mean that as I'm piecing it together in my head now, I realize that it sounds very familiar and fits really well, even though I don't have it on the notebook in front of me. I believe that I just re-remembered something I had thought of before and didn't put down, which is a good sign that is must be how the story goes. I am terrible with writing detailed outlines. 

I admit, while reading that Terry Brooks book Sometimes the Magic Works, I felt a little guilty as he described how much time and detail he puts into outlining so that he doesn't need to revision so much later. I have tried. I even got word processor tool things that force you to break things down into scenes and do mass labeling. I was ambitious for a little while, but if I start getting that detailed then I just need to write it. I guess I'll discover for myself along the way if I need to adjust how I approach things or if this is simply my style, as chaotic as it may seem, but it's mine and I'll love it for what it is, damn it!

In short: Day 5, 2619 words today, giving me a total of 13101! 
What was it I said? 15,000 for Friday? I think it's looking good!

1 Comment
Sharon link
11/12/2014 09:12:22 am

I had to ditch a 4,000ish word chapter that I wrote over a two-day period because of the whole writing myself into a corner thing. I haven't completely ditched it, yet, but it just doesn't fit into the flow of my story. And being a weirdo, I didn't want to count it in my Nanowrimo stats. But I am determined to make up for the lost word count!

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