Wednesday, November 07, 2007

WriMo Update

In case you're wondering, I'm right on schedule for NaNoWriMo. As of this moment, my November novel's 11,681 words. And still, no plot has emerged. But you know the Wrimo motto: No Plot? No Problem!

Plus, you know how I feel about plot. I won't re-rant on it today.

This novel, or whatever it is, feels more like a meditation, or rumination. More spiral in shape. The themes are coming through, or I'm digging at them. I feel like it hangs together on metaphor and theme, but not on a horizontal timeline.

One thing I'm learning is I like the 1667 word a day quota. I've worked before with a 300 word a day quota, and now I'm thinking that's way not enough. The bigger quota gets me into the composition-head more deeply. It hurts my performance at work, probably, but it's only for a month, right? All my daydreaming out the window.

The other thing I'm learning is the bigger quota means I absolutely can't reread more than a day's work as I get started on a new writing session. I usually do a lot of rereading and tweaking, in my "old" writing process. The Wrimos say don't reread AT ALL, and I disagree with that. Often I reread yesterday's work and find places where I can flesh out the detail. And if building wordcount is the goal, that helps more than it hurts. But reading back any more than that results in memorizing the prose, which only makes it harder to kill the darlings later. I memorize the cadence of a sentence and then it feels "weird" (for lack of a more accurate word) to cut part of it.

Plus, there's no cutting in NaNoWriMo. That's rule one.

I'll keep you posted. Let me know if you're doing it too!

No comments: