Little over half way through NaNoWriMo, and it has been exhilarating! I’ve never written a consecutive story for so long (18 days is perhaps not that long, but it is for me). I’ve kept going because I gave myself 2 rules (inspired by the workshop I took with Cecile, which you can read the review here):
- Keep going and don’t look back.
- End the day with the first sentence of what you are going to write the next day.
Although, I’ve not been writing every single day, it has been more like every week day. Sometimes I write 300 words, sometimes 3000. My word count isn’t magnificent, but if I keep going I’ll have a sizable novel in 3 months.
I write in chapters, at least they feel like chapters to me, although it’s not linear. I figure that when I finish I can go back, edit and organise. I realised my chapters are sometimes short and I wondered just how long a chapter should be. I came across this great blog post entitled “How Long is a Chapter?” by Crawford Killian.
He suggests to chapterise like Kurt Vonnegut:
Each chapter was practically a joke: Setup, minimal development, and punchline.
I’ll keep this in mind and continue to write for what remains of the month, and hopefully the months following that.
So that’s it for my update, more on this at the end of the month. And lots of writing to all you NaNoWriMo-ers out there.
Sofia
