Meredith Mansfield, Author

November isn’t quite over yet, but I can firmly state that I will not have written 50,000 words by tomorrow night. More like half a NaNo (around 25,000 words). So, is that a failure or a success. Well, it all depends on how you look at it.

I was never officially doing NaNoWriMo anyway. I was using it as an opportunity to instill a little more discipline into my writing–discipline that had slipped over the last months as I’d struggled with the structure of this story. And that worked.

I was able to establish a fairly consistent writing habit. (There will always be those days when not much writing gets done, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with writing or the story at hand.) I’ve found a pace that’s challenging enough without being uncomfortable–or, hopefully, unsustainable.

I haven’t finished this first draft, but I’ve brought it up to the three-quarter mark (for the first book). And that’s pretty good in my book. If I maintain this pace, as I intend to, I should have the first draft done somewhere right around the first of the year.

I’ll call that a success.

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Last time I said I’d probably have to break the section I was working on into two chapters. I was right.

I’m not an outliner, but I do  set up a road map as I work, at least on novel-length stories. For my rare short stories, I’m usually willing just to jump off the ledge and let the story lead me where it wants to go. After all, a short story is only about 1/20th the length of a novel. Much less risk if it ends up not leading anywhere.

This road map takes different forms. Sometimes it’s just a few paragraphs describing the story–almost like the dreaded synopsis. Sometimes, it’s a little more like an outline. This may be only for a few chapters ahead or provide a skeleton framework for the whole story.

For BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING, it takes the form of chapter headings through the end of this book. With, perhaps, one or two lines about what should happen or maybe a snatch of dialog.

Well, that wasn’t quite sufficient for this particular part of the story. Plotwise, nothing much is advancing here. But what is happening is the stakes for my main character are rising dramatically–right before everything crashes for him. It’s important and it needs to be fully developed or that fall won’t have the weight it needs to have.

And it’s not just a question of length–although I generally dislike writing chapters that are too long. It’s also a question of elapsed time. If enough time has passed for my characters, then it probably deserves a chapter break.

So, that’s the chapter I’ve been working on–almost finished, actually. And then I go on to that pivotal chapter where everything goes boom. After that, I hope to be able to make better progress through to THE END.

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I had a really good weekend last week working on the first draft of BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING.

Things slowed down a bit during the week–which should not be unexpected. I’m still not up to that level of progress this weekend, but I think I know why.

The chapter I’m currently writing is one that . . . doesn’t so much raise the stakes for my main character as make them painfully clear. Painfully, because the very next chapter is the one that’s going to change everything. This chapter needs to really paint that picture clearly, even while not all that much, plotwise, is actually going on. It’s a still place, the calm before the storm.

I’m quite sure I’m not getting all the emotion that needs to be in these scenes in. I’m fairly sure I’m eventually going to have to break this into two chapters. I’m reminding myself of that Shannon Hale quote about shoveling sand into a box in preparation of building castles later. And I’m trying to gather myself for that next chapter which is going to rip everything apart and, basically, force my main character to start from . . . not even from the beginning. Farther down than that.

Authors are supposed to torture their characters for the good of the story. That doesn’t mean it’s always an easy thing to do.

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I’ve had a few very good days on this NaNoWriMo experiment. Over 2,800 words on Sunday alone–and that included a fight scene. Still probably not going to make it to 50,000 words, but that’s not really the point. At least not for me.

BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING is still 12,500 words closer to being done already.

And a pivotal scene coming up in just over a chapter.

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