Today marked the halfway point of the Nanowrimo writing marathon. Spurred on by the ever-growing word counts of my writing buddies in Hawaii and Australia, I vowed to make up ground this weekend (and boy did I need to, after falling way behind my original goal of writing 1700 words every day). And, despite falling once more into procrastination Friday night (I’ve never been a work on your novel every day person, though I’m beginning to see the benefits), today (Nov 15) I managed to turn off my phone, largely avoid e-mail, and write, then write some more–enough to see my own word count grow from 18,250 to 25,335, crossing the goal of 25,000 words by mid-month.
Though having no real plot remains somewhat of a problem, and often I think everything I’ve written is complete crap, and I still don’t really know what I’m doing, being once more immersed in the world of characters and situations of my own making has reminded me that trusting the process, following the characters where they lead you, and letting things–ideas, interactions, developments–come out onto the page even if you have no idea from whence they came, what they will do and if they will work in the long run, is the key to success. You’ve got to let the story be what it wants to be and go where it desires (even if that means writing a work of mainstream fiction instead of literary fiction, if that’s what the story demands)
In other words, I’ve remembered that I’m not writing this novel.
It’s writing me.
*Disclaimer: spelling errors, vague connections between ideas, and unintelligible sentences may occur in posts from November 1-30
Literary Lotus 