A Very Productive Week

One week into NaNoWriMo and I’ve already past the mid-point of my word-count goal.  There’s just something about this month that awakens my Muse and gets her excited again.  [Word Wars: The Muse Awakens]  See? — that just came out of nowhere, so I just wrote it down.  I am merely the stenographer of my Muse.  My NaNo-Novel is really starting to take shape now, as I move my hero and heroine from one plot-milestone to another.  I’ve been having a lot of fun creating the scenes in-between the plot-milestones and my character's personalities are starting to come to life.  My main characters are based off of hero archetypes, each with base virtues and flaws, and I’ve been trying to discovery-write their personalities.  Some of my previously-imagined secondary-characters have become more prominent in my story because I have discovery-written their ulterior agendas and mysterious pasts, which might change the direction of my original outline.  I can already see that I will have to do a lot of revision next month.  Many of my scenes are long-winded with narration, overly descriptive, and my action scenes get bogged down with too many lengthy blow-by-blow details.  But, that's okay.  I’m just dictating what my Muse shows me.  More details later…

That’s all for this ROW80 (Round 4) update.
Please visit the other writers in the ROW80 Community.
Keep the Fire Burning!

All Hail, November!

So it begins — NaNoWriMo starts today.  All of the anticipation and preparation has lead to this very moment, where there’s nothing left to do but execute the game-plan and write.  All of this preparation will have to suffice.  I’m nowhere near where I had hoped to be at this point, but life happens, and as generals often say, “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.”  I’ll have to go into November with a vague outline.  That’s not to say that I’m unprepared or anything.   I have been diligently outlining my NaNo-Novel all month, and I’ve made a lot of headway towards giving it structure with the proper cast of characters.  I’ve created my NaNoWriMo project in Scrivener, where I have my NaNo-Novel structured into four-acts (Act1, Act 2a, Act 2b, Act 3), with each act divided into two segments.  Each of these eight segments ends with a major story milestone (such as the inciting incident, the midpoint reversal or the beginning of the climactic confrontation).  Each segment is divided into four scenes.  These scenes include all the important story-elements that need to be included in that segment for that part of the story.  I like working this way because it allows me to see my story as a balanced whole, and it gives me direction as I write my scenes to the next milestone marker.  I don’t know much about the details of the scenes at this point, but I trust myself, I trust my Muse and I trust the creative process.  I'm confident that my story will come to life once I actually start writing.  I’ll talk more about my story-writing process in my next post…

That’s all for this ROW80 (Round 4) update.
Please visit the other writers in the ROW80 Community.
Keep the Fire Burning!