NaNoWriMo Week 1 Update!
Hey everyone! Today’s post is a weekly update on my NaNo project and how I have been! It has been so nice to keep up with everyone’s progress on Twitter, if you have a blog or YouTube with more in-depth updates as well, message me and share them! Reading into and watching other people’s progress is motivating!
For week one, I got a lot done! I went into the month with a very, very detailed scene outline. I did thorough research and plotted out a lot of gaps and holes from draft one. In a way, after filling two notebooks in preptober, I consider that outline a second draft.
So maybe I will call this NaNo project draft three!
For the first week, I got in 20,000 words! That filed out Act 1! This is right on track for where I want to be, one act a week. Act two is split into two parts, just as the Save The Cat story structure outline shows.
I am no necessarily following that outline to the core, but my first draft did and therefore I had roots to stem from which fortunately kept my story at that pacing.
I think the most difficult thing I struggle with writing is self-doubt. I will have great writing sessions, but the second I step away from the document I wonder if it was good enough.
But here I am to say that everything you write is good enough. I listened to a few podcasts recently and one of them talked about how you never really like your own work because it is your own voice. Just as you most likely dislike the way you sound in a video, that reflects on the page as well.
My strength is definitely my speed. I write really fast, and I never came to terms with that until now. I think intuitive editing is approachable being in a third draft. It has helped a lot. I write in the morning, at night, and sometimes throughout the day… but the times I am not writing and have downtime, I pull up the google doc on either my phone or iPad and read through my work thus far. It is a different view than the laptop and feels like I am reading just another book! Through doing so, I can intuitively line edit and add little words or remove descriptions here and there with no pressure.
Another tip I have learned is to write in the morning. No matter if you are a morning or night owl, getting in at least a sentence in the morning sets you up for success. It relieves the tension of starting to write since you already technically did. It seriously makes it easier to type later in the day.
Overall, my story is growing into a huge tree that I never imagined could scrape the sky so tall. This story is laughable in its first draft. I get so giddy over the development and progress already made. And there is so much more to go!
If this is the first draft for you, it will feel the same accomplice way. Getting those words down is magical. I was scared to edit and completely rewrite my story, but I am so thankful now for the time and effort I put into rereads and outlines, and research. At the moment it may seem overwhelming, which it is, but it is so worth it!
My plan is to reach 80,000 words in this draft. It is possible at the rate I am writing, and I am not going to tell myself that it is impossible. Words are overhyped. Worrying about a word count is ridiculous. I only bring them up in this sense because of NaNoWriMo. But on a normal writing day, I would just talk about what scenes I have gotten through. In that manner, I have gotten through 19 scenes. My scenes are jumbled, some much longer than others, so averaging a word count on each one does not make sense. Some scenes are 500 words while others are 3000 and that is ok!
I hope you are having a great NaNoWriMo so far! I cannot wait to share this story with you one day!
If you made it this far, here are my genre(s):
Urban Fantasy/Magic Realism/Supernatural Romance
See you soon!
Olivia B.
