NaNoWriMo Week 2

A few snippets from things that I have learned about myself during this weeks NaNoWriMo:

1) You know those moments when you’re writing and a character just sort of takes over the show, and suddenly the story is going in a totally different direction than you originally thought it would be and you are totally inspired and just writing like mad to catch up to this sudden change?  Yeah, that creates a lot of words….

2) I think I’m completely incapable of writing a short story.  I’ve written a couple in the past.  I like them, but not as much as I like my full length works.  And working on my new short stories this week has produced something I hadn’t previously expected (aside from the above moment of character revelation).  It has produced two much longer stories than intended.  Either I’m going to have to take a serious editor’s pen to these stories when they are done (and no, I promise, I will not edit until after NaNoWriMo), or I’m writing novellas.  Maybe it’s time to do some research into the market for novellas…

3) I have never loved math or science and though I love science fiction, I’ve never really understood all of the actual or theoretical science behind it.  Not really.   So what on earth made me think it would be an intelligent decision to make one of my novels a space opera in which the two main characters are biochemists and it is told from their point of view?  I don’t know, but I will either come out of this experience knowing a lot more about biochemistry, or I will come out of this looking like a complete idiot.

4) When you hit a particularly difficult portion of a scene, and you’re having trouble writing your way through it, what do you normally do?  I tend to put it aside for awhile until the inspiration strikes again.  Which means that I have stopped writing it.  What NaNo has made me do is keep writing.  Keep making strides and putting words to the page. They may be terrible.  It may just be enough to get you through that moment and over the hump into a moment that you actually feel real inspiration towards.  But, as famous Romance Novelist Nora Roberts said, “You can’t edit a blank page.”  So you keep on trudging through, you keep on writing utter crap until it becomes inspired again.  And you can always go back and edit it later.  After NaNo, of course.

And now for the great word counts of the week:

Once again, the key is as follows: