Hello everyone, I'm back!
Woo, and I'm very glad I unplugged last week, I don't think I would have been able to catch up without it.
Blood Ties @ 64,011 (I slacked a bit on this one, but I needed to focus on Plural for NaNo)
Plural @ 43,886 (So close!)
And here we are. The last days of NaNoWriMo, the whirlwind of coffee and writing that has taken over my November.
Now. The bad news.
I messed up on Plural. Badly.
Yes, yes, I know, it's okay to mess up, it's okay if your rough draft is crap, that's the point of NaNo. But that's not how I messed up.
At about 25K words, I took a wrong turn, and it changed the whole story, and not in a good way. The only way to fix it is to re-write the whole last half. Which sucks, I know. I'm going to finish my wrong-turned story as is, then after I've had a break from it I'm going to jump back in and figure out how to fix this thing.
I'm disappointed that the whole last half is probably going to be deleted, but hey, at least I wrote it. It's not total crap writing, it was good practice, it's just total crap plotting. See, I wrote in a scene which triggered a chain of events which dragged the plot down one of those sketchy dead end alleys with no streetlights and, you know, there's rumors that it's haunted, and maybe that's true, or maybe that's just a hobo hiding in the shadows screaming like that. You don't know. But you definitely don't want to walk down that alley on a dark night by yourself. Because you will get stabbed-- be it by a ghost or a crazy hobo. It makes little difference when you're bleeding to death next to a Dumpster which smells of rotting flesh and stale alcohol.
Hm. Well. That was an interesting tangent I went off on there. Anyway, you get my point, I'm sure. No? My point is that my story got stabbed to death by the ghost of a hobo in a creepy dead end alleyway. Poor story.
Anyway, I don't regret writing it, even if most of it will be scrapped. It was practice. Practice is good. And now I need to write 6K more words of practice to get to that 50K goal.
Have I learned a lesson? Yes.
I am an Outliner. This is very obvious now. I like outlining, it's one of my favorite parts of the writing process. So from now on, I will (probably) outline all the time (most likely).
So, I still have lots of blog posts to catch up on. (Sorry I can't comment on all of your posts, I follow over 100 blogs!) But let me know how your week was!
How was your third week of NaNo-ing?
Do you think you'll win?
Haha, well clearly, even when your mind goes down a dead-end, it does so VERY creatively! I remember some of my loser tangents when I did Nano 2 years ago ... Why did it seem like such a good idea at the time to do a bunch of filler chapters with bland, pointless dinner conversations? But I guess that's the whole point of Nano ... it makes you think on your feet, and in hindsight, you learn what NOT to do as a writer!
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to win but what I've written is stuff I'm very happy with. So its gone well, I admire your ability to unplug, well done! I hope you make it through the rest of NaNo!
ReplyDeleteI did the same thing with my NaNo story and I blogged about it yesterday, except I went with a driving metaphor. Mine wasn't as major as yours because I only wrote a couple of K before I realised my mistake.
ReplyDeleteHalf the fun of writing are the things you learn, or so we tell ourselves.
My week has been crazy because we just moved house. Don't move in November. Lesson learnt!
Good luck with the rest of NaNo.
Haha, Kat, you crack me up. I love your hobo/alley metaphor.
ReplyDeleteGood for you for unplugging! I'm thinking of doing the same once we go to CA next week. So excited to read BT when it's done! But please take your time and look it over or whatever you want before sending it :)
Happy Thanksgiving!
You've reminded me why I outline my novels first. Okay, even then they might go off on a tangent.
ReplyDeleteGood luck figuring out what to do with your story.
Your poor story! Stabbed in an alley. That's a bad way to go.
ReplyDelete