Thinking Ahead

…Is it too early to think about this year’s NaNoWriMo? It doesn’t occur for another seven weeks, but I’ve already decided on what kind of project I’ll be working on for the month of November. (Of course, anything could happen within that time period and I could always change my mind.)

Perhaps I should rewind for a bit and explain.

Early last week, I decided to browse through some short stories of mine that I had saved on my computer. I felt like getting back into the swing of writing, but I was coming up a bit short on inspiration. Most of the stories I was rereading were pieces I had worked on back in the spring. Also, most of them were incomplete stories, but I just wanted to revisit them.

Once I opened up one particular story that I had written back in March, it sparked something inside of me. The “story” consists of only one scene, and sits at 681 words (so, three pages with double space). I actually stopped writing it in the middle of a conversation between the three characters, if you can believe it.

I didn’t have much of an overarching plot for this particular story, but I liked the characters I had created. On a separate Word document I saved during March, I had even (very) roughly sketched out four other characters that hadn’t appeared within that scene, along with a basic description of their main settings.

So naturally, I soon found myself brainstorming more about this story. I broke out my character development list in order to flesh out the major players. I haven’t reached for my plot charts yet, but they’ll be coming soon because I already know that this will be a large story.

And since I’m aware that this story could take me a while to finish, I figured NaNoWriMo might be the perfect time to write it. I have to crank out 50k words during November anyway, so I might as well. Especially since I haven’t worked on a single project for NaNo since 2013. (Yikes. Has it really been that long?) In the past three years, I usually write multiple stories until something sticks.

But a part of me goes, “Amanda, why don’t you begin writing this project in the middle of October? It’ll probably go beyond 50k words, so you might as well get a head’s start because you’re not going to want to write in December. It’s going to get difficult during the holiday season.”

Of course, I would never record any words I’d write in October for NaNoMriMo. Not sure if it’s considered “cheating” to jump into the middle of the project on November 1st, but I’ve always been a NaNo rebel, so I don’t really care.

This way, I can spend the next few weeks brainstorming – the world building and actual plot still need a lot of development. And then I can start writing around my birthday next month, which will prepare me for the discipline of writing daily again when NaNoWriMo occurs. Not sure what my word count goal would be in October, but I’m leaning towards at least 1000 words/day. (In November, it’ll be at least 1667 words/day.)

At least, that’s my plan right now.



P.S. In case you were curious, I’m nearing the end of CROOKED KINGDOM by Leigh Bardugo. I’ve finished 497/536 pages of the book so far. I’m hoping to finish it either tomorrow or Tuesday; I’m going to really miss this series once I finish.