I am almost done! But with Thanksgiving tomorrow and a trip to see friends on Friday and Saturday, I'm stressed about my word count. I should be writing but I'm completely stuck on the final showdown between good guys and bad guys. I want to catch them without killing them, but it needs to pack a punch because it's the climax. I've gotten through a lot of hard scenes before by just sitting down and writing. As I write, the characters suggest what they would do in that situation. I know thinking about it is slowing me down, but I feel like I've got to have at least a framework. I don't even know where they're going to have the show-down. Feeling stressed, but hopeful to have come so far.
November 19, 2013 (Major spoilers)
I made it to the halfway point last night – 25,000 words, yay! That's slightly behind pace, and I started off a little slow too so I've got some catching up to do, but overall I'm pleased to still be trucking along on this.
I'm right in the middle of a place that's been giving me some trouble – rescuing Mason from town. When I sent Hyrum and Dee in to get the truck I had no idea they were going to find Mason and that I was about to learn a whole lot more about his character. What a surprise for me too. I knew they'd find a little boy but I didn't know he'd be Mason's little brother. And then, Mason's step-dad makes an appearance too?? That was a true ah-ha moment for me. I had no idea who his step-dad was, and only had the vague idea that Mason came from an abusive home. Making that connection really tightened up all of the motivations for Mason's actions (for me, anyway).
Now I'm struggling trying to build up the suspense and the reveals of the scene at the church. I probably just need to blast through it and then go back and deal with improvements in re-writes. Since it's nanowrimo, I also consider word count a lot, which probably wouldn't normally be so important.
November 12, 2013
I hit 15,000 words today and I'm going to finish up chapter 6 tonight. I'm trying to write about cows. I've never milked one before, so I'm depending on the internetz to fill me in. Writing a well researched book was such an amazing feat before the internet! I'm happy to say that every time I think I don't have anything else to write about, a new conflict manifests and needs to be faced. I haven't even planned most of them, they just occur to me as I have the characters moving from point A to point B. My instinct in life is to avoid conflict and smooth over the ones that occur, so it goes against my nature to load problem after problem on this poor girl. It definitely makes for a more interesting plot and better reading though.
Outage is born
When I started the Nanowrimo challenge in November of 2013, I had no idea I'd eventually end up with a book. In fact, I wasn't even going to join the challenge because I hadn't done any research or planning. I didn't think I had a story to tell.
But on November 1st I emailed a friend and told her I wanted to do it (accountability), and then I sat down in front of a blank Word doc and started a brainstorming session with myself. I made a list of books that I admire and that I wished to emulate. Then I made a list of what kind of story I wanted to tell (fairy tale or mystery, romance or sci-fi, etc).
I decided to write a book that I would want to read. I've always loved post-apocalyptic fiction, and I read far more YA than anything else, so it was an easy decision to combine the two. I decided to write about a solar flare that caused an EMP and what happened because of it.
Next I needed a setting. I'd had a dream a few weeks earlier - one of those dreams that feels like you're watching a movie. I told a friend that it would make a good zombie book, and he found a little corner of Washington that he thought would be a good place to start the story. I figured I could use that for Outage, so now I had my setting.
Last I needed some characters. I vague knew what I wanted:
- A troubled teen girl
- A wise mentor
- A love interest
- A good friend
- A dog
I started writing. I wrote 10,000 words before my research uncovered that a solar flare wouldn't do nearly the kind of damage I wanted. Not enough to end of the world. So I had to set aside a lot of those original words and try again. Those were dark days because cutting so much really put me behind on my word count, and word count is everything in the NaNoWriMo challenge. I almost quit. (This was before I found out I shouldn't be editing, and I could count all of the words I wrote, even if I had to cut some later.)
I think the biggest reason I kept writing was that even I didn't know what was going to happen next. I had a basic outline I will share in a later post, but it mainly said stuff like "plot twist" and "climax begins." I was so motivated to write because I wanted to find out what my characters would do next!
Once I reached 15,000 words I knew I was going to finish the novel. I would later run into more trouble, but by then I knew I needed to find out what happened to everyone. I'd gotten to know the characters and they demanded I tell their story!