Miscellany of a Cheshire Cat

I finished my 50,000 words yesterday at 7:33 p.m. I actually ended up a little over since I was in the middle of a rather pivotal conversation at the time. I hit 50k at a good point but the story isn’t over. I still need to add a couple more scenes to resolve the plot. I think I’m going to wait to do that in the Spring when I pick this up again. Right now I’m still feeling rather like I had two finals and a final paper due yesterday - which is too say, recovering.

So, 10 days ago I wrote that I didn’t like my story much anymore and I started mentioning to friends that I didn’t really expect to finish. What changed? The plot hit its stride and got interesting. It’s still not high art, but it’s definitely less trite than I’d feared. So not only was it an awesome experience that I hope to repeat next year, I have a large body of text to work with and try to work into a finished product after a requisite waiting period. The waiting period is definitely necessary. I need to step away from it completely so that I can see whether it is actually a cohesive story and world when I reread it. Ideally I’ll go back to it with fresh-ish eyes in April or so…

So what did I write? It’s a little, still untitled fantasy novel about a world just to the other side of our own. No, you can’t read it yet. Wait for summer after my editing exercise. I won’t even let the Fop read any of it.

I learned so much doing this writing project.

• Guess what? I can write a solid 2000 words a day even when I have no idea what to write!
• I need to get to know my characters and world before I can really get into the plot. The first 14-20k words were still part of the book but I think another time I’ll do more pre-writing rather than just jumping in.
• Writing is good for my brain.
• I can kick out high volumes of text when my plot is interesting and the deadline looms. I wrote about 14,000 words in the last 24 hours of my writing. (Just look at that graph!)
• I can send my inner editor on vacation for a month but sometimes there are ramifications of that in other parts of my life.

It was awesome. It’s like I remembered how to write over the course of 50,000 words. The difference between the flow at the beginning and the end is huge I think. Now we need a National Novel Editing Month scheduled for May…

tags: finished, nanowrimo, novel, victorious, writing