You may have noticed that I didn’t do another one of those resolution posts back in January. I’ll admit this freely: It was mainly because, at the time, I was lazy. But having said that, I can’t help but feel like it wasn’t a bad thing.
I’ve got a bit leery of talking big about what I’m going to do. It’s really easy to do, especially when I don’t know what I’m really capable of or have a firm grasp of everything I’m committing myself to.
Take, for example, my recent spurt of writing. I completed NaNoWriMo four days ahead of deadline, and promised all and sundry – especially the folks to whom I’d been sending my 1,667 words per day – that I’d keep to a weekly update schedule. That petered out within a week, and I didn’t get back on the horse until about a week ago, when I committed myself to writing 1,000 words per day, every day. I even put a widget from Don’t Break The Chain, an online calendar application that allows you to mark off the number of days in a row you’ve performed a particular task.
I started back into the novel, and within a week had finished it. The ending was a bit rushed, but for a zero-draft, I’m not going to complain – plus, for the first time ever, I finished a draft of a novel! The first one I’d ever really, seriously attempted! OpenOffice clocked it in at 71,573 words, including chapter headings. An achievement? Yes. Absolutely no doubt or argument in my mind.
But then I found myself at a loss.
Sure, I could go back and start revising the novel. But that’s not exactly writing, and I want to give that a bit more breathing room before I dive in with notepad and red pen. No, I wanted to write – and I was suddenly at a loss as to what to do. I didn’t have anything in the pipe that I could just pick up and get stuck into, not even SlamDance. Sure, I have four and a bit chapters of zero draft discovery writing done, but I don’t have an outline, which I did have for my NaNo novel. I want to build one before I start, mainly to figure out where and how I want it to end and who the bad guys are going to be.
That’s going to take a little time, and will involve making notes, not consistent prose. I need some other projects to work on in the meantime, things I can have ready to pick up and just write on.
Do I have some ideas? Certainly. I made a few notes at the library during lunch today, and I did a little reorganising of my assorted writing notes and ideas files.
I don’t want to go into any more detail than that. Vickie knows well how much of an Imagunna I can be, and I’m getting a bit sick of it. From here on in, I’d much prefer to tell you what I’m doing and / or have done, rather than tell you what I’m going to do, build a reputation based on my actual work (and work ethic) instead of my big ideas.
Will it work? Folks, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to watch this space…
(How many words is that? Just over five hundred and sixty. Hrm. Okay, time to go and work on something else…)
By the way, if you want to read my NaNoWriMo zero-draft, let me know (including how to get it to you) or log onto the Not Nano Australia forum and look for it in the “Novels” category.
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