We're almost a week into NaNoWriMo and this it is every bit the challenge I thought it would be. Unlike in the past, my word counts are unusually low. I did a lot of prep work and even handwrote a bunch of pages. So what's going on?
I'm stuck.
I'm not stuck about what to write. There's plenty to say. I'm stuck about how the story is organized. Reunion has the greatest number of characters in any of my stories and keeping it organized has been problematic.
Some writer friends recommended I buy a copy of Scrivener. I read about it and even have a trial copy from years ago on an old laptop. I'll check it out again and see how it works. If it means I write this story on the old laptop until I buy a copy of Scrivener, then so be it. It'll make transcribing the handwriting easier, because I can organize the chapters, scenes, and character descriptions later.
At the moment, I'm just writing.
Are you stuck? Are your word counts down?
Even though my word counts are down and my day job takes most of my time, I've made it a point to write every day. Write something every day, even if it's a few words.
If you're behind as I am, there's no reason to get frustrated or panic. Remember, we are creating something from nothing and writing a story. Each word we type puts use one word closer to our 50,000 goal.
When I was a retail store manager, we'd ask this question: How do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. Therefore, how do we write our novel? One word at a time.
Now that we caught our breath, let's get back to work. #NaNoWriMo awaits!
