Today marks the 7th day of NaNoWriMo. I have written about 3,600 words of Emily’s backstory. My main goal this month is to figure out who Emily is as a person, how she meets Liam, and what kind of relationship they have before Athan comes into the picture.
I am off to a good start and love the opening scene of this story. I am not so much writing a novel as much as I am pulling out info about Emily. I have also narrowed down Liam’s family gift. When the story falls into place, it feels so good. I want to tell everyone all about it. Luckily, my husband has become a good listener when I want to toot my own horn or just talk out loud about these characters. He laughs at some of the names I choose, but I just shake my head and call out some of the names of the characters in his favorite novels.
I have not started writing today, but I will. I do not typically scene jump, but I think it is important to get what I need from this writing and not try to create a full story moving from point A to point B. I can always do that later. When I finished the opening scene, I was happy with the progress, but I stopped writing at the close of the scene and lost momentum. Now, I am struggling to find a pickup point. I do not want to drag the reader from day to day to day to day, but I have a hard time skipping through time to move the story along. My drafted novel is like this, too. The story moves from scene to scene. One linked to the other in a day to day, sometimes minute to minute timeline. Maybe that is ok. Maybe I should do me? Maybe I should just stop overthinking and just do the damn thing, right? Yeah!
Wendy Crafton Writes 