So if all goes as planned and I meet my daily quota at the end of the day tomorrow I will be 1/3 of the way through the NaNo challenge. Which is right on track for me since I want to be mostly done if not all the way done by the time C comes home for Thanksgiving.
Because I am writing every day instead of waiting for a story to come to me and reworking it over and over in my head before committing it to the screen I'm having to write in a way that is different for me. Less thinking and mulling more writing. I'm also not reading, rewriting or revising. It's all just dumping out on the page. So I have no idea at this point if when I go back and read it all at the end it will work together in to a cohesive story. It should be interesting.
I'm also having to think on the fly. As I start my yoga in the morning I feel like I've stepped out of Princess Bride and the story is the farm boy. Well that was a good story but as I have nothing left to write I'll most likely kill it this morning. Then I do my yoga, then my cardio and while that is happening part of my brain is thinking well, what next? Should I talk about Aric some more? So I go back to Deidre? Do I write the scene where Cal dies or do I leave it as it stands? And by the time I finish the cool down and stretch out again I have an idea. Shower, dressed and back to writing. As you wish....
I have to say the greatest challenge (aside from doing it every day) has been in trying to do something different. When I write a short story, my comfort zone, I am giving you a window in to a life. Just the briefest glimpse of these people. One situation. One snapshot in time. They all have back stories, but they are in my head, I know them but you don't need to. You get pieces of them. The story I wrote recently about the couple in the coffee shop? You could piece together their back story with what I gave you, but there is a whole world there I left unsaid. And that's what I like about short story writing. You get to fill in the missing pieces and make the characters what you need them to be.
Now? I'm writing a long story. You need the background. You need to know who these people are and why they are doing what they are doing. Things that were vague ideas in my head when I wrote the first short story about them now have to be fleshed out. And that's tough. Because some of what I could leave up to you to figure out is now on me. And I don't know! I mean really, one of the ideas I had that is fairly central to the story I am having a hard time figuring out how to make work. Right now it's kind of water colored vague and I might just leave it like that. YOU figure it out.
But the good news is I am doing it. Every day. Workout, write. Small bites.
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