Hello everyone!
The first week of NaNoWriMo is in the books. So far, I’ve gotten the first three chapters of Between the Maws and Claws drafted, and have begun working on the fourth.
It’s been slow going most days that I’ve been writing. I’d say my average for writing a page is about thirty minutes, and my pace sometimes has been nearly double that.
This is usual for me when I’m starting any new manuscript. I’ve got pages of notes for where I want to take the story, but those are mostly bullet points, maybe a paragraph here or there serving as a reminder to myself why some aspects are going to be integral to the story, either here or down the line. Putting it all together in a cohesive narrative (that’s hopefully entertaining) still takes an effort to get going.
Day one took me about fifty minutes to write, and a lot of that was gaps just spent staring at the screen, thinking about how to incorporate the next note. I may have even cheated a little with more dialogue than I intended, so the first chapter might get hacked to bits by a machete before it ever reaches another pair of eyeballs.
A couple times, I did hit that usual pace of thirty minutes without the crutch of dialogue, and felt like I was starting to find a rhythm. But then I reached one of my long writing days, and was back to my long pauses where a roadmap of where to go would’ve been useful.
I’ve also been making lots of notes as I’ve been writing for revisions I already want to make in the second draft. Most of the notes have to do with the atmosphere I’m trying to capture within the chapters, feeling that they’re lacking and that I want to punch them up a little. There’s also the introduction of a plot point that I want to occur a little sooner than it did. This was due to me having it towards the end of my notes for one of the chapters. When I’d written the notes, I’d realized I’d wanted it in there sooner than I’d listed it, and when I started to actually write, I’d followed my notes, including the mistake in the ordering of these events. This is why you can’t just blindly follow your notes. If there’s a mistake in them, you’re just compounding it.
Although it’s a slow start, I’m not discouraged by it. The beginning of a first draft is always a hurdle for me. It’s my first time really seeing how the characters behave in the narrative, the first time polishing them from the rough ideas of who they are and their motivations so that they fit into the world I created. It’s always a feeling out process until I start to get comfortable, both with them and the world they live in.
Having already started on chapter 4, I’m starting to feel that comfort. Incidentally, this is also when the main antagonist has not only been teased, but is making his first appearance, which has already started to open up the story so that the main character doesn’t have to shoulder the entire load. Things are starting to pick up, and I can feel it in my writing as well.
I expect I’ll start to see that momentum in the next week.
Until next time.