Well, that was slightly insane! 50,000 words (200 pages) in one month. Whew. I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo several times, but this is the first time I completed the wordcount requirement of the hellish marathon. I feel a little like the protagonist in a beauty contest movie trope, who entered the contest in order to mete out the “danger,” but gets sucked into the nuanced upside, and becomes a fan. A writer’s version of Stockholm Syndrome?
During the first two weeks, I was a bit too concerned with granular detail, i.e. sentence structure, transition and flow. But once I logged 25,000 words, I kicked that premature perfectionism to the curb in favor of volume and energy. The daily goal (aside from the 1667 word mandate), was simply to end on a note that would make me want to return to dream world the next day. I realized, halfway through, that what kills a first draft more than anything is boredom. Which was counterpoint to my misbelief going in. I was more worried about creating incredulous plot points—diving into absurdism to the detriment of suspending disbelief.
Tom Spanbauer’s description of the first-draft process is “shitting out that lump of coal.” Pretty sure the lump of coal I just shit out is leaving major skidmarks on my brain. I need a week or so to disconnect from the intensity of pushing these characters into so many dangerous (and, honestly, absurd) situations.
So now that I have my “discovery” draft lump, I’ll address the painstaking work of refining (which, if this is to be a viable novel, will produce some 25,000-30,000 more words). In service to this refinement, this compressing of coal into gem, I’ll need to slow the pace considerably in favor of deepening characterization, and taking a hard look at cause-and-effect. This next draft is where the balance of logic and leaping plays a role.
The big news (for me) about my NaNo adventure is that it taught me to honor draft-specific compartmentalization. Because I like a process, I have a new acronym for drafting/revising a novel-length body of work:
DRIP—your six-month guide to going from zero to done: