NaNoWriMo Week 2 progress

I am so busy writing for Nano that my progress reports are running three days late!

Week 2 began with a crash: I came to a screeching halt after my auspicious start! My daily word count plummeted and I was frozen in whatthehelldoIdonow? Desperate for help, I turned to the amazing NaNoWriMo forums and read about Plot Doctoring and Word Wars and other helpful things. I posted a distress call to the boards and my fan journals and got encouragement. And I found this blog by checking Twitter for #nanowrimo.

Martha Alderson saved my book from certain doom. Her post “The End of The Beginning” was exactly what I needed to find on that day, Nov. 8, when I had no idea what to do. The blog told me things I did not want to hear: like I needed to stop reworking the safe ground of lovely description and character backstory and get on with it. But I could feel that she was right, so I took a leap and bought her book (on Kindle; a first for me.) The Plot Whisperer: Secrets of Story Structure Any Writer Can Master told me more things that were difficult, but thrilling, to hear. Such as the way our character’s problems and our novel’s problems all lead back to our own shortcomings. And how the flaws of the character are essential for an interesting story. And that some writers are linear/action oriented, and some are description/feelings oriented, and that we each need to strengthen the side we are weakest in, in order to have a successful book. Wow.

Great things that happened in Week 2:

• got out of “the beginning” and into the action-packed middle of the book
• developed secondary characters including my most villainous one and his motivations
• went to two great write-ins where I met fellow NaNoWriMos from DC, Maryland, Hawaii and Australia!
• cranked up my word count by sticking with it even when it was tough, or I thought it was dumb
• made a good back-up system and backed that up too

By Monday the 14th I had reached  22,589, only 749 words behind a 50k-in-30-days schedule!

However, as with last week, the midweek days see lower word counts than the weekend, so here I am heading into the homestretch of Week 3 running seriously behind! So, here I go again: I am heading to town to enjoy an afternoon with a friend, and then we’re both going to do some serious wordsmithing. Writing in the courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery should be delightful.  And when it grows darker and we need caffeine and sustenance, we’re heading for Teasim.