NaNoWriMo Week 3: The Plot Thickens

At this point I’m not really sure why I’m labeling these posts as “NaNoWriMo” anything, because this has definitely been my worst NaNoWriMo ever. Wait, let me check the stats on that. Uhhh yeah. It looks like I got to 30k back in 2012. 

And this is what this year looks like:

Here’s a graph in case my level of failure isn’t immediately apparent to you:

I’m not all that bummed out about it. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I had a number of projects going at the same time and getting my daily word count in for the Space Circus ended up at the bottom of my list of priorities. That said, I’ve made some good progress on the Space Circus. How is that, you may ask?

Well, after a whizbang of a Thanksgiving together, my writing buddy Kris and I took off for a couple of days and boarded ourselves up in a hotel to get some writing done. I had intended on writing another 10k onto my Space Circus story, but soon realized that while I had a vague outline constructed out of a premise and some interesting details, I actually had no idea what was supposed to happen between the beginning and the end. In other words, I didn’t have a story. Since I am utterly incapable of writing without a thorough outline, this was a major problem for me. I ended up spending the entire Thanksgiving weekend working on an outline. There are still some missing components. I’m torn between making the underlying structure of the story a murder mystery or a romantic suspense, but…there’s a whole lot more to it than there was last week, so I’m calling it a win.

We also celebrated Kris’ birthday. We ordered pizza, a couple more of her writing buddies came (with BTS cake), we critiqued each other’s work, and we had a riot playing Gloom. The rest of the time Kris and I ate Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast and lunch, and grabbed Indian for dinner. It was nothing short of fantastic.

In the meantime I’ve been racking up short story rejections — including my most painful rejection yet — and I can’t wait to share them! I also have my last aerial silk foundations class this coming weekend, so you’ll get to hear all about it next week. Whew! Now I remember why I went five years without piling NaNoWriMo on top of my November. I think it’ll be another five before I try it again.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
~Christine