NaNoWriMo

Speaking of NaNoWriMo, (and I was, if you read the previous post) I found it exhilarating to force out the words. "Keep going," I told myself. "This is a draft, you can iron out the wrinkles later." I ran the deadline a bit tight, and had to produce 5,000 words a day for six days straight to make the 50,000 words by the end of November. But I completed the challenge. a little "winner" icon is now in place on the front page of my Arryn Heath web site. I know the benefits of outlining, but this steady writing was good, too. I wrote a character behaving in a certain way and didn't really know why, yet 10,000 words later, his actions fit neatly into an interesting subplot that seems to strengthen the whole theme. If I hadn't kept writing, I may not have reached the important place where this character became revealing. I might have tried to analyze and plot and outline, and possibly scrapped the whole premise. I have written like this before. What became my third published novel, Bring Home the Ghost (now out of print) was written in less than two months (first draft). It was historical fiction and I had to do research, too. But a character one day popped into my head and sort of said, "Write my story." So I did.