NaNo09, Day 6
I'm behind on my word count already, but unlike past years, I'm not worried. After last year's miraculous accumulation of over 10,000 words in the last two days of writing (and still managing to finish a day ahead of schedule, if I remember correctly), I know that I am capable of wondrous things.
I also had a breakthrough last night. Up until now, I've been thinking of novels as more or less linear entities. I think this is because my main experience with novels is through reading them, and reading is a linear activity. You start at the beginning, you read through to the end, and then you stop. I knew at some level that writing doesn't need to be done linearly even if the end product is linear - you can write scenes as they come to you and rearrange them into the proper order later.
What I realized - fully grokked - last night is that at the draft stage, there doesn't even need to *be* a "proper order." I realized that I have complete freedom to write scenes that may not even be relevant to the story at hand if they reveal something to me about the characters or the setting or the plot that I can then later use when I revise or rewrite. I can write scenes in whatever order I like because the draft isn't a place for setting the timeline of the story. It's the place to play. It's the place where I can play. If I'm having trouble with the scene where the character is stranded in the middle of a backcountry road on a dreary day, I can skip back to her past and write about a fight she had with her lover, even if it doesn't make for good narrative flow. And it doesn't make the novel BAD. It makes it exactly what it is: a draft.
This opens up so many possibilities for my writing that never quite clicked before. Now hopefully I'll be able to apply my newfound discovery as I attempt to catch up to the target word count of 13,336 by the end of the weekend. Ouch.
I also had a breakthrough last night. Up until now, I've been thinking of novels as more or less linear entities. I think this is because my main experience with novels is through reading them, and reading is a linear activity. You start at the beginning, you read through to the end, and then you stop. I knew at some level that writing doesn't need to be done linearly even if the end product is linear - you can write scenes as they come to you and rearrange them into the proper order later.
What I realized - fully grokked - last night is that at the draft stage, there doesn't even need to *be* a "proper order." I realized that I have complete freedom to write scenes that may not even be relevant to the story at hand if they reveal something to me about the characters or the setting or the plot that I can then later use when I revise or rewrite. I can write scenes in whatever order I like because the draft isn't a place for setting the timeline of the story. It's the place to play. It's the place where I can play. If I'm having trouble with the scene where the character is stranded in the middle of a backcountry road on a dreary day, I can skip back to her past and write about a fight she had with her lover, even if it doesn't make for good narrative flow. And it doesn't make the novel BAD. It makes it exactly what it is: a draft.
This opens up so many possibilities for my writing that never quite clicked before. Now hopefully I'll be able to apply my newfound discovery as I attempt to catch up to the target word count of 13,336 by the end of the weekend. Ouch.