According to the official NaNoWriMo chart, I’m about two and a half days behind schedule. This is after taking four days off last weekend.
That’s not great. I’m not thrilled about it. But I’m not in panic mode, either. I can still make it through the month, and hit 50K—I could take weekends off, and my current pace would still carry me through.
So that’s kind of good.
The real challenge right now is maintaining perspective. I woke up yesterday morning, suddenly very worried about my main character: she’s passive, she’s been rescued twice so far, and she’s not really driving the story.
But here’s the thing: I’ve spent two weeks writing this story. (So far.) I spent months before that thinking about the story, including nearly a month of intense planning. I’ve been living with this story for a long time.
But the story itself has only just started. The scene I’ve been working on for the past few days (it’s a long, difficult scene, for me and for the characters) is the first act break, about 25% of the way through the story. (Obviously, when the dust settles, the story is going to be more than 50,000 words.) I mentioned before that I’m using the Hero’s Journey as a guide for this story… well, up until this exact point, my heroine has been actively resisting the call to adventure. Of course she’s not driving the story yet.
She hasn’t had a reason to. Not until this scene.
So, that’s where I stand right now, half-way through the month: I’m behind schedule, but that’s fine. My main character hasn’t been driving the story, but she’s about to start.
And it’s going to be so cool.
Reghan Skerry 