NaNoWriMo - The Handyman Day 5

Blame it on Truman

This is my first NaNoWriMo. I think it's a great premise and a really worthwhile experience. The plan for me is to see what the experience can add to my writing method.

My fiction writing and planning is all done in Scrivener, in which you can set a target word count and target date goal for the project's completion. With a 30 day deadline for NaNoWriMo and a defined target word count goal of 55k, it seemed like a great idea to enable them. Except it hasn't been. I've been fixating on the count and even with a good story structure in place, the whole experience feels like running down a steep hill too fast - sometimes it's exhilarating but mostly it's about worrying I might break both legs at the bottom.

A good example of what's not working in aiming for a daily word count, is a chapter I finished yesterday. I did a lot of planning for The Handyman, I have a scene map for the entire first half of the book. I knew the scene I needed to write was of a detective talking to my protagonist who is laid up in hospital. I knew what they needed to discuss and the outcome.

With the required word count taunting me, especially as I was 1k off the pace after three days, I headed straight into my detective narrative without giving any real time to imagining how I would stage it. I just went for it and the result was 500 words of event and discourse without any sense for the moment.

For me, feeling confident about writing successive chapters, hinges on the previous ones playing well in my mind, even if I know they will be edited, sometimes extensively, later. It has to feel right and that feeling has to come from character. I have to look back at the chapter in my mind and be able to see it play like a scene in a movie.

Just getting a scene down to hit a world count and not being able to 'see it', feels like building a house with the wrong kind of foundations, or more to the point, getting an actor to recite lines of dialogue without any attention to the quality of the performance.

Which makes the whole writing a book thing not fun. It has really brought home to me what is important about my creative workflow, which is giving myself time to write the filmed version. Not trying to hit a word count. That sounds like a no brainer now I say it, but all you seem to hear is the 'word count'.

So, I just disabled the Scrivener targets. While I did, I got to thinking how a movie director might approach 'creatively staging' a scene on a given production day. I don't expect they make up how it will play on the day, they will have planned and know ahead of time. So... over the next few days I'm going to end the day by looking at the scenes I will probably be writing the next day, and have a go at visualising how they will play.

This is still NaNoWriMo however, and in keeping with the spirit of the event I will be posting total word counts once every five days, starting from tomorrow (Day 6).

I'm not expecting anyone will be wondering where yesterdays NaNoWriMo Day 4 post went, but if you were - I totally forgot. I sat down to watch The Truman Show last night and was tucked up in bed watching the end credits before I remembered. Oh well, I thought.

Now off to plan the next five scenes. No doubt you will be hearing how it went in the next day or two.

< The Handyman - Day 3 - The Handyman Day 6>