NaNoWriMo (1613)
Yes, yes. I’m behind in EVERYTHING. I know. NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, life… the usual. You’ll notice that my word count is actuall less than what it was before. I have a good reason. All the stuff I wrote before is still there, but right now, it’s not part of the story. It will be, eventually. As I re-read the words I wrote, I realized that I had a whole lot of internal monologue on my hands, right? but no semblance of a plot and the characters were loosely formed. Then, I got stalled because there was no story to tell. So, I gave it a rest for a few days, waiting for the idea to come to me, the solution, really to my block. And it did come to me, in the form of a dream. I tell you, these pregnancy dreams are wild, just wild and they make great fodder for storytelling. This dream was particularly good fodder. In one fell swoop, I was given characters, some dialogue, a setting and a semblance of a plot.
When I woke up, I wrote down what I remembered of the dream, and used that to launch my story. It gave me a concrete event to work with– I had to come with a reason for the actions in my dream, and I had to invent the consequences of these actions. From there, the story has unfolded. I’ve had to make some decisions about the characters and since I’m splicing in the text I wrote originally, I have to write good segues in keeping with the flow of the story’s plot. Having something tangible and concrete to work with makes all the difference in making word count progress!
