NaNoWriMo Week 1: Ashley Newell

Words today: 0 (I’ll start after this)

The Writing Process: Getting an early lead has been super helpful. Writing over 3,000 words each day from the start has really saved me as I experienced a few blips along the way. At least I have managed to write something everyday. I did have one day where I was tempted to go to bed without a single word added, but I forced myself to go on. I only added 426 words, but I couldn’t be prouder of myself for sticking to it! I may have had to re-write most of what I added, but to drop the ball now will make it all the more tempting later on.

The Story So Far: Right off the bat my main character turned out to be far rougher around the edges than I had expected him to be. The Detective was always meant to be pretty no-nonsense, but I didn’t realize that his experiences would make him so intense. I’m still not sure if I’ll have to go back later on and tone it down a bit, but once he got reminiscing about why his attention turned to Wonderland in the first place, I couldn’t help but share in his rage. He is supposed to be looking for missing children after all, and the information that his witness brings to him is pretty sickening.

This week I’ve been learning about all sorts of characters. I came into NaNo with a decent idea of who they were and how they all fit in together, but of course it isn’t until you finally see them in action that they start to really take on personalities of their own.

I needed a new perspective to take a little break from Detective Hatfield, and I must have started the same sentence four times, each time with a new character that I knew played some part in what Hatfield was experiencing. I couldn’t get into it, though. I decided to toss aside my ideas of transitioning and just picked a character that I personally was looking forward to meeting. If I can recommend anything to aspiring writers: keep it interesting for yourself first.

I had no intention of introducing Chess so early on, but I needed something to get me motivated to explore again, so I unleashed her onto the page and watched her weave herself into exactly what I needed. Chess is my Cheshire Cat, humanoid but not entirely of this world. She’s a bit of a troublemaker, and as of yesterday, she has been released into the world above. But, oh, the wit on that one! I don’t know which I love more, what she says or what goes through her mind when she doesn’t say a thing!

Only one week in and she has saved this story twice now. Once for getting me flipping perspectives more naturally, and secondly for being in the right place at the right time and getting Hatfield where he needed to be. I wrote out a whole series of action and consequence that led the Detective flat on his face in the real wonderland. The problem was that his means of getting there was so flawed that there was no logical reason for him to stay, which is the whole point of the story, to explore the world beyond the looking glass as he does. This was part of that mess I wrote after a long exhausting day. So there was no hope for it but to re-trace his steps and figure out what went wrong. Well, it turned out that the character he was with at the time was doing nothing more than holding him back. Quickly flipping back to Chess’s perspective and having her be in the middle of Hatfield’s act of desperation gives me a solution that’s mutually beneficial to both of them. Chess wants out, Hatfield wants in. I always knew that these two would be working together eventually, I just didn’t realize how much they needed to work together.

Of course there are other fun characters who have popped up and shown a bit more of their history to me, but I won’t go into all of that. I still have a whole list of others to meet and a whole mess of ugly truths to dig through.

For Week Two: I expect to be in the middle of all of the drama. It’s going to be one thing to have Hatfield find a number of his missing children; it’ll be quite another to watch what he does when he learns that he can’t take them home. I predict I’ll be experiencing quite the whiplash as his emotions shoot from one extreme to the other. Thank goodness I’ll have someone like Chess who can provide commentary for me to stand behind like safety glass.

I have a lot of hope for this NaNo. I just cross my fingers that I can keep my word count cushion up for those days that I’ll need it. Full time teaching/planning/marking does not make balancing easy.

If you’d like to find out more about my progress, I have been trying to do daily posts on my personal blog: http://newellbooks.weebly.com/blog and my stats can be followed on my NaNoWriMo participation page as well as Twitter @olanthea.

Happy writing!