I broke a big NaNoWriMo today: I jumped stories. As much as I love the characters, particularly Sally, the story just wasn’t coming together. I’ve tried to shoehorn it into various classic contemporary urban fantasies, but the idea has so far resisted plotlines of any kind. I was finding drudgery to show up at the page everyday and struggled to get even 1000 words written. Part of the problem is modern urban fantasy isn’t my favorite genre. I much prefer epic SF and F to read. And apparently to write, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The other thing that happened is an epic fantasy idea I’ve had in the back of my head for years finally all fell into place. I had an outline. A very, very minimalist outline, but enough to tell me where I was going. I had a solid beginning, middle, and end. I’ve never gotten that with any of my other ideas so far. I literally ran to my keyboard and started writing. Soon I had the rough outline down as well as a couple of character bios and backstories and had decided who my narrator for the tale was going to be and why and decided it needed to be written in third person limited. I really love writing in first person, but that’s not going  to be a broad enough brush for what I suspect is going to be an epic fantasy. I wrote nearly 2500 words today before my husband came home. I can’t wait to get back at it tomorrow.

This is my own world; I’ve been working on it for years as an RPG setting, but it really needed to be fiction and knew that at the time. I’ve even partially created it’s major language and several cultures have been roughed in. The writing today was effortless–a new feeling for me who, for three NaNos now has struggled with every word. This was one case where I knew I had to get started on this right now.

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So it’s the beginning of the second week of NaNoWriMo. My word count is about half of what it should be, but at least I’ve been writing consistently. Right now, I stand at 6773 words. But my pain level is up, so the fact that I’m getting anything written at all is probably a minor miracle. I’m still aiming for 50,000 words, but I’ve set myself a lower goal as well. I won’t “win” if I meet it, but I’ll still be very happy. I missed a couple of days last week and my personal goal is to make sure I write everyday now. I’m aiming for 1000 words a day: anything over that is just gravy.

I’m currently working on three flash fiction stories related to the book (so they’re part of my word count, even though they won’t make it into the book directly. I hope to have the first one posted here by the end of the week (no promises, though).

So that’s a quick status for me? How about you? If you’re NaNoing this November how far have you gotten? Remember: you don’t have to win; you just have to finish (my new mantra). And remember:

Write boldly

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