I started my National Novel Writing Month project today and I am happy to report that as of writing this I am over 2,000 words in which exceeds the daily goal they set. I know that I won’t reach the goal every day so the more days I can go over the goal the better.
For a project this year I am writing a novel about my Knights of Reignsborough character Ricochet. Specifically I am doing his origin story and I outlined the novel using the “Save the Cat” method. I wanted to talk a bit about that because I am not usually an outliner. I had three projects I was debating on doing. Each of them are novels that I want to write, but I couldn’t make up my mind. I found by working through the outline it made me think about the story as a whole and not just my concepts for the stories.
For one of them I realized that my science was bad and a lot had changed since I first thought up the concept. The world I created just didn’t work and I needed to spend a lot more time working out how the technology should function, how the political dynamics should work, and basically world build before I could truly tell the story. I had started that novel once before and got 10,000 words into it before I realized I had lost my way. Outlining it helped flesh out the story and while it gave me a path I am not completely happy with that path yet and the flaws are now glaring.
I found that my outline for the Richocet novel was very detailed and realized that I had put more thought into it than the other two concepts. I knew this character already and I had no problem outlining the book. I’m not completely happy with the outline, but I don’t need to be. I can change things as I go. It is just a framework to keep me from getting stuck like I so frequently do.
My third concept is the first book in a series. I have a real desire to write this series but as I look at my work I don’t think I am ready to take that on yet. I want to improve my writing more, research more, and generally take more time. It is not a good project to write in a month if I want it to be hard Sci-Fi. I also have doubts if the series will be sellable. It is about a generation ship and each book would focus on a different generation. I don’t know that new characters for each book is something that would sell or not.
With my project decided I started writing today. I was struck with the desire to go back and edit or to pad things to fit some artificial idea of what a chapter size should be. I had to keep reminding myself that editing and formating comes later. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to just write it and to achieve the goal I need to turn off my inner editor for now. That doesn’t mean I can’t make minor fixes or maybe add a new paragraph later in the month, but if I want to complete it I can’t get into the editing loop.
I really feel like this is my year to complete NaNoWriMo. Please wish me luck.