This week I have pretty much faced the idea that I floated last week that, because I did not do any sufficient planning for my novel, I’m not going to have anything like a novel written by midnight on November 30th. That is not to say that I won’t have 50,000 words written, though. And do you know what? I am actually quite happy with this realisation. Something that I pride myself on is that I’ve never missed a deadline for a (non-academic, I was a horror at school) piece of written work, and I’m always the one that yes, can get something to an editor when they ask last minute, so I’m not worried about not finishing. All my worries and insecurities about my writing going into NaNo this year thankfully seem to have slipped away.
The reason I wanted to take part in NaNoWriMo this year was to get writing again, to remind myself that I can actually write fiction as well as articles. This week I have really surprised myself.
A bit first on what I am writing now. I was originally penning a serious novel surrounding a mystery that happened in a historic boarding school. Pretty much only the boarding school part of that is still true, but only really now by association. One of my protagonists is still a teacher, and another is still a student at the school. And as I’ve said, I’m not really writing a novel. What I am writing is a collection of scenes, which do progress chronologically around a bit of a scandal. They are very character based, and further character development in something I think I’m going to later use to inform writing an actual novel can only be useful, right?
I said that I have surprised myself. This week I’ve written over 4,000 words in one sitting. I can see from looking back at some of the first scenes I wrote, and from what I wrote last night, my dialogue (always one of my weakest areas) has improved by miles. However, the thing that has surprised me the most is that I have written a couple of scenes I did not know I had in me. I’m one of those people who goes about life always with an alternative cast of characters running around in their own little world in my head. Some of the things I have just knuckled down to write and become lost in have stepped out of this alternative world in a way that has never happened before.
I’m not even sure if what I have just written even makes sense: I’ve just written some things that, if an editor had asked me to write in my day to day role, I’d turn down the task, believing that I was not up to it.
Finally, I’ve had a bit of a genre re-visit. You know I said that I was reading Gone Girl? Well, for those of you who have read it, I got to the bit in the middle where the whole plot twists. I don’t think at this point in my life (if ever), I’m going to be able to write something like that, and I think I’m okay with that now. I’ve spent so long studying great works of literature (I focused on Paradise Lost at university, and my dissertation was on clever, modern political theatre) that I think I lost sight of what books are mostly about: enjoyment. What I have been writing for NaNoWriMo has taught me that it does not really matter if I’m not writing the next great piece of literary fiction, as long as someone will hopefully enjoy reading it.
If it helps, I read Gone Girl, about a year ago, and I felt like that. I couldn't see how I could devise plot twists like that, or even keep two first person points of view going. However, I had a go, trying to craft a short story. It didn't work out well, and I ended up converting it to a single point of view and it seemed to work much better.
I think you are doing the right thing by creating a number of scenes. You are trying to write 50k words in a month, it will never surface as a novel. But it will give you the bare bones of something that you can rework and format into a novel once the pressure is off.