To achieve my 50,000-word goal, I need to write 1667 words every single day in November. But day one of NaNoWriMo started rough. I spent a few precious hours after work starting and scrapping all 750 words of my story. It just wasn’t suitable for my character and my writing style. I wrote in the 3rd person, and it felt too distant, too far removed from the action. It’s a trap I sometimes fall into with 3rd person. My writing becomes broad and sweeps over the story without getting into the small, essential details in the scene. I find it much more challenging to show and not tell, for some reason.
I could have continued working with the story to give it a little time to breathe, but NaNoWriMo wants me to write the entire novel within a month, so I’m choosing to scrap the 750 words and start again tomorrow. I’m using this experiment to do two things: give my readers an insight into how I write a novel, start to end (if I can make it within the month), and I want to give my readers an insight into NaNoWriMo, which you can visit here.
Insight from Day One of NaNoWriMo
And something interesting has already emerged. Due to the time constraints of NaNoWriMo, I have chosen to abandon my initial approach in favour of a new, more familiar one. Is this a good thing? Has the challenge helped me establish the correct course much quicker than I would have done without it? Or, as I assumed before beginning the experiment, has the challenge rushed me into making a hasty decision?
I have used one day of NaNoWriMo and written nothing. That means I need to write double tomorrow to get back on track with my goal – 3334 words. But I have a character, and I know what I want to write about, at least the type of thing I want to write about. My protagonist is looking for a new and alternative way to live, away from his family and past. He wants to experience the unfamiliar As I continue the novel, my character’s motivations will need to be more precise than this, but it gives me a good starting point, and I can draw on a few of my own experiences for this story.