My NaNo novel is an unwieldy beast. And by that I mean it’s going well but its plot can easily go in four directions and I’m conflicted but only really conflicted because I am sort of getting to the point of procrastination. I KNOW, it’s day 14, I can’t afford that. But even so. I’m at 16,890 words last night/this morning and I really do need to get a move on to catch up to where I have to be. (1,667 x Day # = Where I Ought To Be.) I am confident I can get there today or this weekend, but that hinges on my getting down to work. That’s where I’ll go right after this.

I actually spent a lot of Tuesday/Wednesday (and the few days before it) reading the first two books of Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy, called The Magicians’ Guild and The Novice. I started the final book The High Lord but early on I shut it and said, “No. You will not get wrapped up in this book. This is bound to be an awesome book. You do not want to read this. NO.” Thus, I stopped and started working again. I actually never meant to read those books in November. I actually – gasp – bought them the last week of October, intending to read them all in 3 days, as is customary usually when I finally break down and buy a book I’ve never read. So I started The Magicians’ Guild… and read it… and read it… and forgot about it… and forgot… and guiltily picked it up again… and pushed and pushed… and then I got to one scene, mid-book – MID-BOOK! The hook of a good book never takes that long for me! — and THWWWP. I finally, finally saw possibilities branching out for this world and its plot and I dove head-first after them. By then it was the first week of November and I’d been casually reading a chapter here or there before bed or while bored because, well, it was not a hooking but a diverting book. So I finished the book with the stunning final scene’s revelation and I… well. I went right over to the shelf and picked up The Novice and went right into it.

I saw The Novice‘s plot picked up a few months later and that it was about to go into the boring-ness of the beginning of the book and its set up (Trudi Canavan is a plotter. Her books’ characters are interesting by virtue of the things they do — or did, or have done — and when/how they do them, not how they say them or what they look like. There are no complex images; the writing is blunt and direct. Thus, I could sense there was Plot to set up, so I was able to calm down a little.) A little meant waiting a day before spending the whole of the next day (Tuesday) reading it. I wrote maybe a dash that day. I really worked hard at night to overcompensate and I did a little. I started The High Lord just enough for the brief synopsis set up and to discover if there’d been any revelations in the year between the end of that book and the start of this, then read a biiiit more to see where the plot was likely to go (I’ve got a few firm suppositions now) and I put it down. I hid it. I ran to the computer, opened my NaNo story, and started vigilantly resuming my word count. The way I write is so vividly different from Trudi Canavan, it’s funny. That, and I find myself so much more interested in character-character stuff rather than setting up world structures (like, for instance, a school; though I must mention I do not enjoy writing stores that take place within the confines of a school, much like Diana Wynne Jones). I think when I do write structures like schools they end up feeling more like Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea‘s school, which was there, and developed, and involved some scenes and some characters, but was by no means the reason for the book nor did the bulk of the plot take place there.

I’ve already learned a ton about myself because of NaNo. Firstly, when I’m in the zone, I can pump out thousands of words easily. When I’m not, a hundred is torture. Getting in the zone take as little as rereading the last stuff I wrote, or honestly working to immerse myself in the word by doing world-building stuff in my extraneous documents or pumping up the music. (I write to mindless pop and/or musical soundtracks I can sing along to. I usually prefer to write to musical soundtracks because I like that each musical’s song evokes a part of a plot with character motivation, desires, and stuff like that. Musical songs bring a character or characters from Point A to Point B through their singing, and that’s more interesting usually than a plain old pop/rock song. Though I occasionally do like me some rock. Or lyricless movie scores.)

Next, reading a book when trying to meet a deadline is clearly just a Bad Idea. Thus the rather large and intimidating pile of constantly renewed library books (I am keeping them around for Thanksgiving’s train ride, I tell myself). Next, I am easily conflicted — ooh, not really a surprise — and I am, or can be, really creative. I am proud of myself, actually, for some of the things I’ve come up with. When creating two important secondary characters, I deliberately chose new and interesting character directions for them and came up with some dynamics I’ve never written before — but the kicker is that they work so beautifully in conjunction with the main character and the plot. I get a bit gleeful sometimes when I surprise myself and I find myself doing that a lot with some of the blundering decisions I’ve made because of time constraints with NaNo. I do not, however, think that it’s solely because of NaNo. I knew I did that in one of my novels ages ago (when 80K words in a document was me not finishing the book and realizing that I’d written some behemoth of no coherent villain motivation and a lot of necessary-but-not scenes of world-building).

Oh, back to the grind I go.