Just a Quick Note!

Today is the eighth day of NaNoWriMo and praise be, I'm still in the running!

It's been both harder and easier than I imagined. Yesterday I wrote to a dear friend, who has been my stay and support through all my writing ups and downs over the last few years. Here's what I said to her (somewhat edited for brevity's sake!)

NaNo update: well, its quite amazing. Doing this has really changed something for me - not that I'm suddenly producing deathless prose at the drop of a hat, of course. But I can say this: (although with much trepidation, seeing as its only the sixth day of NaNo and I'm still writing in fits and starts, feeling my way forward very, very cautiously - and I'm behind the schedule - BUT at least I'm writing, which is more than has happened in a long while.)

As you know, whenever I've tried to start a new writing project in recent months, my first step has always been to create a story outline, then to try and make character sketches and only then to start writing, once I feel fully organized and in control. I spent ages on plotting, story-telling, character design, making notes and coming up with plot ideas etc. Well, you know exactly how far that has got me, lol!

On Sunday evening, I realized that at this point in NaNo, I didn't want to - in fact, I couldn't - do that anymore. In the actual NaNo writing, I've started letting the characters do the talking and acting and reacting and thinking ... so it felt like to now go and impose any kind of structure beyond the existing outline would actually arrest that process.

And I started remembering that THIS is what it felt like back in the day - back in the days of (Unpublished Novel No. One), and (Unpublished Novel No. Two). It was free-flowing, unstructured, coming from someplace I had no conscious control over, even though I still agonized over which words to use. I'd completely and utterly lost touch with that creative flow and NaNo has now become a process of finding that again. I have no idea if the voice I'm using is any good, or if it sounds stilted or true or artificial, or anything - but for better or worse, its me. My writing voice.

It's a wonderful and quite scary feeling... as in - will I be able to keep it up? When will I know if its any good? Aargh - all the usual writerly panicky things! ;-)

If anyone's interested in my progress, the link to my NaNo profile, which includes a regular update on my word count (right now it's 8998) plus links to my awesome NaNo writing buddies and occasional excerpts from the Opus itself, is HERE.