Finally Over: NaNo Day 30
Day Thirty: 1,235 words
Well, the meter doesn't reflect it, because I had computer woes today and couldn't imput today's and the last two days total, but actually my total for NaNo is 21,714.
So, what use was this? I'm not even sure--I think we'll find out this month as I turn back to my WIP and see if this writing exercise was of any use in helping to increase my output. I won't even look at Dame for a month or two. I'm too close to it, and all I see is crud--and I mean even more than usual.
NaNo is about turning off the inner censor, and for good and bad, I find that hard to do. Let me take the example of a one-shot I did, "Release," since that's completed and long since posted. My original idea was to tell the story of Hermione's captivity from Draco's POV. He'd come at first to mock and taunt her in her cell, but she'd make him think, and gradually over time she'd win him over. I even was going to do it in first person, present tense--and that's what I tried.
It didn't work.
Eventually the story became about Hermione and Draco after he'd helped her escape and he in turn was being held at headquarters--about the aftermath and repercussions and implications of the escape. It wasn't told first person, present, but third person past (though my poor first-look beta, Djinn, saw what resulted--I kept slipping into present tense. She finally just sent a note back to me and said "fix this, and then I'll beta." Ouch. But only fair.
So, my point is that when I write I constantly filter, censor, rethink, even often midway thru a sentence. Which is not to say I don't proof and revise several times before a beta--any beta sees it, and often during beta it again changes a great deal. Release was originally 2 thousand odd words--by the time I worked through bambu345's beta, it was over 3,500 words.
Apply that to Dame with the requirement to do as many words as possible a day--when I didn't even know where to go. You see the problem? I already know there's an entire scene that I'll have to chuck, because I went on a detour to nowhere then backtracked.
It's strange, because in other areas of my life I'm a linear, anal, organized person. But my creative writing part doesn't like it that way...
So, who else did this? And What do they feel they got out of it?
Last Dame Sans Merci
I took a deep breath and cleared my mind. A trick ironically learned from Harry via Severus. I think I got more out of Harry's Occlumency lessons than he did. I'd spent far too long lately spun around emotionally and running around physically forgetting what I did best was done here, in the quiet of the library. I reached for the quill in my ear and pulled the parchment towards me. I ran my hand down the spine of the leather book, somehow feeling soothed by my preparations, by the very smells so dear and familiar to me. Magical Cartography and Tracking.
Let Malfoy use his charm on Cruselle and his haughty bluster on Frank. Being a know-it-all in the end has its uses.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled LJ. No more daily LJing for me. I'm going to take a break for a couple of days, then start working on Book of Shadows. With a little luck, you'll see me pop up next to say it's in beta, even if not updated.
Now go and check out the stories of the sshg_exchange. I will.
Oh, one random note because it amuses me no end. I tried posting two fics on Fiction Alley (will never do that again) and both times neither story ever came up among Recently Added--ensuring, I was certain, I'd never see a review from that archive. Gambit was posted there in July, Release in September. No hits, no reviews for months. Release now has its first review on FA. A rather nice one. Just got the notification email about the "thread." Not that I see any way of replying. Oh, I see. You have to "add" a review to respond to it. Ugh.
People post there why?