NaNo: the half-way point
I am still really, genuinely surprised at how well it's going. I got behind yesterday for the first time, because I flaked out after a bad night's sleep and watched Scandal for several hours instead of writing. But today, I got it all back. I've never written this much, this quickly, and I honestly didn't think I could do it. I thought I would give it a go, but I thought I would fail, and of course I haven't won yet, but at least now I believe. I'm a believer, folks :D
I think the no. 1 most valuable thing I have learnt so far is that an outline really, really speeds things up. Before I started looking around for prep resources for nano, I had never even heard of an outline, let alone considered using one (my planning process consisted of scribbling a few notes in a separate word doc as and when ideas popped into my head, but otherwise just... writing). With an outline, whenever my momentum begins to slow and I start to think "what now?" all I have to do is look on my spreadsheet, remind myself where I'm up to, and get going again. Of course, it's not quite as easy as that. I don't think I'll ever be the kind of writer who writes such a detailed outline that they don't need to do any thinking during the writing part, but it certainly cuts out the vast majority of the time I used to spend frowning at the screen or staring into space.
My story is split into five roughly equal parts, and before I had started, only the first part was planned in a scene-by-scene way (even though it was a very rough scene-by-scene way). The remaining parts had only the highlights and major plot points, with diminishing detail as the story went on. Part five just said "resolution". So when I finished up the first section last week, I needed to spend some time working on the outline for the second section, to get it to the same level of detail. So I did. And I think this is going to work for me because: a) I still don't know the nitty gritty details of parts 3, 4 and 5, so my hindbrain is still interested, turning that problem over in the background and occasionally popping out a good idea, and b) many of my best ideas and character points come through the act of actually writing the characters in their setting, so if i do it step by step like this, I'm still allowing myself space to find things out about them and their world as I go, and that's the bit I really, really love about writing.
So, as GRRM says, it might well be true that there are gardeners and there are architects, and I still think I'm the former, but there are most definitely things to be learned and gained from the other side. This is turning out to be surprisingly fun!
I think the no. 1 most valuable thing I have learnt so far is that an outline really, really speeds things up. Before I started looking around for prep resources for nano, I had never even heard of an outline, let alone considered using one (my planning process consisted of scribbling a few notes in a separate word doc as and when ideas popped into my head, but otherwise just... writing). With an outline, whenever my momentum begins to slow and I start to think "what now?" all I have to do is look on my spreadsheet, remind myself where I'm up to, and get going again. Of course, it's not quite as easy as that. I don't think I'll ever be the kind of writer who writes such a detailed outline that they don't need to do any thinking during the writing part, but it certainly cuts out the vast majority of the time I used to spend frowning at the screen or staring into space.
My story is split into five roughly equal parts, and before I had started, only the first part was planned in a scene-by-scene way (even though it was a very rough scene-by-scene way). The remaining parts had only the highlights and major plot points, with diminishing detail as the story went on. Part five just said "resolution". So when I finished up the first section last week, I needed to spend some time working on the outline for the second section, to get it to the same level of detail. So I did. And I think this is going to work for me because: a) I still don't know the nitty gritty details of parts 3, 4 and 5, so my hindbrain is still interested, turning that problem over in the background and occasionally popping out a good idea, and b) many of my best ideas and character points come through the act of actually writing the characters in their setting, so if i do it step by step like this, I'm still allowing myself space to find things out about them and their world as I go, and that's the bit I really, really love about writing.
So, as GRRM says, it might well be true that there are gardeners and there are architects, and I still think I'm the former, but there are most definitely things to be learned and gained from the other side. This is turning out to be surprisingly fun!