Unless you're me.
So I'm not a traditional NaNo-er. I think I might have used the website, like, once or twice. But I do use it as motivation and a self-imposed deadline. Sometimes, the challenge is for me to write the first half of a novel since, as a regular writer of 100k-word tomes, the NaNo goal of 50k is just that. Sometimes, the challenge is to finish revising something. This year, it was to complete a manuscript I started in September.
It was a tall order, since I had a lot going on in November between performing in an aerial recital and traveling to Tucson for a convention... and getting knocked flat by con crud for a solid week. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, but I picked up steam toward the latter half of the month. Oh, the manuscript was a struggle bus for sure, but by golly I was going to get to that last chapter.
Then on Wednesday, November 23, around 1:20pm, something happened that nearly derailed it: I got home from a noon kickboxing class, hopped into the shower, and got a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant idea for a new book.
Okay, so it's not really that brilliant. But it is exciting.
Even though all I had was a concept, I was so excited, I immediately hopped onto Facebook chat and started going on about it to some writer friends. And as I was going on, ideas started tumbling out unprompted (thank you, very patient friends, for putting up with the torrent). I so, so wanted to just start clattering away at this shiny new project right away.
But I was one week away from my goal. I had a whole plan to reach it if I wrote a chapter a day, two on weekends, for my existing work-in-progress. And this was a literal shower thought... it seemed silly to throw aside months of work for something that might not pan out to anything.
So I made myself a deal: I would wait a week. Finish November and my existing manuscript. Then, if the idea still seemed as brilliant as it did in the shower, I'd write it.
Thanksgiving weekend rolled around and I ended up writing way, way faster than I anticipated. I finished the manuscript early, on Sunday. I thought I'd need a few days to recover from the mad dash to the finish line.
On Monday, the shower thought book kept banging at my skull, until finally I created a Scrivener file and started typing out the ideas.
On Tuesday, a whole outline and first chapter poured out.
It's now Monday again, exactly one week since I started brainstorming, 12 days since the fateful shower thought occurred. I have 21,500 words in the new manuscript - 9 out of 28 planned chapters. I never write this fast... Usually, it takes me weeks, if not months, to even figure out my outline. But this book just wants to be written.
Will this keep up? Who knows. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and go, "Well, that idea was silly. I should set it aside for a bit." But for now, I'm enjoying the ride.
What's the book, about? Still not ready to talk about it publicly (mostly because I'm afraid I'll decide suddenly that I hate it) but I'll give you a hint...
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