Strange Nanowrimo days

I was doing well on Nanowrimo up until Wednesday this week. I had bashed out 26,710 words of first draft and my vertical bar was right on the rising horizontal target graph line on their little Nanowrimo chart. Hurrah!

Then I got stuck. On Thursday I spent most of the day in a state of stuck, staring at a screen, drinking coffee, pacing up and down. I didn’t know where to go next. This is what happens when you make it up as you go along. I knew the end of the story but was jammed on how to get there. Then I cut out the last few hundred words of Wednesday’s work, a wrong turn, replaced some of it, and finished Thursday with 26,063 words, meaning I had gone backward.

The replacement words came courtesy of exercise book and pen. Sometimes staring at a screen is futile. Somehow there is more freedom with pen and paper. It doesn’t look so finished. You can scribble notes on the side. It went okay on Thursday afternoon and today – Friday 17th November – may have been the best days writing I’ve ever done, for quantity anyway. I sat and scribbled out eighteen pages. That’s more than 4,000 words and it flowed like good red wine. I started just after nine a.m. and was finished by 3 p.m. even with interruptions for duck pen cleaning and woman feeding. And the story is finished too. It’s not a novel, being about 32,000 words, but it’s finished. Hurrah. I typed up most of it tonight and have about 3,000 words to type tomorrow. Not write, just type.

I’m making this public just to help anyone other Nanowrimists who get stuck. You can get out of it! Have faith. And try the pen and ink technique. It might work for you too. If not, try white board and marker, stone tablet and chisel – anything. Staring at a blank word document until your eyes bleed is not always the best way.

I believe I will carry on with the Nanowrimo schedule and get another novella out of it of 20,000 words or so. That’s made it a productive November. First draft, of course. There’s a lot of work to do yet but a first draft is a big step.