NaNovember - Day 15 - Midpoint Crisis

So, what happened to days 12, 13, and 14? That's what I want to know, too!!

It's now the middle of November and I'm coping with the knowledge that I'm hopelessly behind, hovering around 10k words when I should be approaching 25k. I've effectively missed Nano already and there's still 15 days to go. Man, that sucks.

Last year I cruised through NaNo and ended up wriiting almost 60k words. How was it so easy last year and so hard this year?

Well, I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and I've come up with a few reasons.

1. Last year I started from scratch, while this year I'm a "NaNo Rebel" and decided I'd use November to finish my current work in progress.

Why do that?

Frankly, it takes a lot of time and energy to think of a story, and I've got one already loaded into my head, so I didn't want to push that story out to make room for a new one. I was concerned that I might not be able to come back to it easily, and nothing would be worse (to me) than having two half-finished books sitting on my hard drive.

I know that some people work that way and don't mind it, switching back and forth between multiple works in progress. That's really hard for me though. I'm great at starting something new, and not so great at finishing things. That makes it extra-important for me personally to actually finish things before starting new things.

2. I've hit that point in the story where I'm not sure what happens next.

The last three days I've been sitting around stumped, wondering how my protagonist should handle the situation she finds herself in now. In a big picture sense I know that she will solve the particular puzzle in front of her and move on to the next milestone in the story, but at the micro level I'm having a hell of a time thinking of how she should do it.

Well, why not skip ahead to the next scene?

Yeah I've thought about that, and I'll probably go ahead and try writing a later scene soon. The problem is I'm right at the midpoint in my book, and I'm trying to decide which direction I want it to go.

This is the first book I've planned in advance, and having reached the midpoint I've realized that some points on my outline are pretty weak and that there are a few small but important elements missing from the story right now.

That's not the end of the world, but it leaves me in a bit of a bind. Do I try to plow ahead, just pretending that I've "fixed" the issues in the first half of the story, and discovery write my way to the end of the story? Or do I go back and edit what I've got to get those issues fixed and build my momentum back up?

I'd like to plow ahead, but the story has lost a bit of momentum and consequently I'm having difficulty writing. To me, those go together. So the work of going back and editing isn't fun (nor does it help my NaNo word count), but I'm beginning to think that I may have no choice.

3. I've grown as a writer

This is going to sound a little silly, or even arrogant, but it's true. I know a ton more about how to tell a good story this year than I did last year. Consequently, I'm more aware of when a chapter is good or bad, when it "works" and when it doesn't. Last year I felt no shame plowing ahead with word count for the sake of word count, thinking "I'll just come back and edit this later." I did go back and edit it later, in fact I ended up completely re-writing my NaNo novel. The first draft ended up serving mostly like a detailed outline for the second edition of the book.

The thing is, that second edition didn't really work either. The story skeleton wasn't strong enough, and the work I'd put in on the first draft made me feel overly attached to the plot and characters. There's a cool idea in there, but I needed to go all the way back to the drawing board and figure out a story that WORKED, not just polish a turd, so to speak.

That's where I'm at now. I know I can write, so putting words down and watching the word count grow isn't much of a thrill this time around, especially when I know that the words I'm writing aren't going to be kept.

So, have I soured on NaNo?

No, not at all. I think NaNo is amazing, and doing it last year really changed my life. At the same time, I'm realizing that trying to "compete" in NaNo while being 60% of the way through a work in progress really isn't all that productive.

I think I have a solution for that, which is something like this. Over the next 12 months I'm going to work pretty hard on NOT having a work in progress come November. I'll see if I can get a book wrapped up September 1, so I can spend a good 4-6 weeks outlining my next one before NaNo starts.

Then I'll try to use NaNo as the kickstart to write the first half of the new book. Given that 50k words is pretty close to the midpoint of a story, and I've had a bit of a "midpoint crisis" in every book I've written, I think using the month of November to plow ahead to that point is a great idea, and a good way to get a book started.

In fact, I'm beginning to think it might be part of an ideal workflow for me: plan a book for 4-6 weeks, blitz through a month of discovery writing to get a feel for the characters and world, step back and evaluate, revise the outline, go back and finish the book over a couple months of writing and editing.

As for this year's NaNo, well........ I'm not sure what my goal is now. 

And as for Paul, I think he's struggling too.

So much for writing an inspirational November full of cheerful tales of how great we did at this, haha :)