Nanowrimo 2013 - Simmering

The simmering stage, that's what I call this.

It's once you've gotten past that first bit that you've imagined the novel started with.  The opening scene introducing your characters has been written.  You've gotten past that first painful bit where you doubt you ever had an idea that could sustain a novel.

Suddenly as you're writing a drop of new knowledge is dispensed.  His sister's an alcoholic?  Really, I didn't know that but it sure makes sense with the stuff I want to write later.  He's suffering from depression?  Wow, that's great because I couldn't figure out to take them to those darker places.  This is the stuff novels are made of.  Happy coincidences.  They happen in life and they happen in books too.

I'm a bit behind on my word count.  Only *cough* ten thousand words or so *cough*.  I've got time to catch up though and suddenly, with a few 'happy coincidences, things look much more possible then they did yesterday.  I have some facts to play with now and I'm sure they were just the tip of the iceberg. 

Day three of Nanowrimo 2013

This is the post that's completely unnecessary.  I should be pounding out the words on my novel instead of creating a post for a blog.  I'm struck, however, at how similar events play out.  Every year before it's around this time that doubts begin to grow.

Once the first idea get's pulled out of your brain, the opening scene that you've ran over and over, in a loop, on your minds eye, and it finds it's way into the digital ink that you're throwing down, you don't know what to do next.  Sure there's other scenes, further along, that you can't wait to write but you can't do it yet because you haven't connected the dots.  It's those lines between the turning point that eventually create the picture, when it comes to connect the dots.  So, here too, it's the moments in between those big scenes that you're drooling over that will give your novel it's definition.

I know a couple of other characters that will eventually play a part, I haven't figured out yet how they enter or leave the story, I just know that they exist in some of those scenes I'm waiting to write.  I also know some of the sub stories that bob and weave through the book but, again, I don't know what or how they involve themselves with my characters yet.

Maybe, I should call the book...yet.  There seems to be a bit of that peppered throughout what I've written in this post, so far.

The trick is plodding along.  Sometimes the most painful work is the best work.  I've noticed in other things I've written that, at the time, when I thought I was just getting a word count in and that the pages I'd written would eventually just get tossed out, upon second review it was some of the better stuff I'd done.

So here goes, back into that breach....