NaNoWriMo2020 Status Report – Day 8.
Along with thousands of other wrimos, I’ve completed 8 days of novel writing as part of National Novel Writing Month, popularly known as NaNoWriMo. At the close of my writing session today, I was at 15,490 total words; keeping at a pace of 1700+ per day with some 2k days sprinkled in. To reach the goal of 50K words during the month of November, we have to hit a daily average of 1667 words. So far, my lowest total was on election night, which is not surprising. That was a stressful night and it was difficult to find focus for my writing.
As a part of the NaNoWriMo experience, wrimos can join local/regional groups for encouragement, information and commiseration. The regional chapter I’m a part of covers Thurston and neighboring counties. We’ve got a Facebook page and a Discord server. I’m enjoying the Discord group. The accountability of reporting the day’s totals is satisfying and helps keep me on track. I’ve also got a couple of individual accountability buddies outside those groups. Daily check ins about how the day’s writing went, what our totals are and what challenges we are facing keeps me accountable and also gives the opportunity for encouraging and cheering on others. As much as writing is a solitary task, I find it important and soul-recharging to be in community with other writers.
Today I jumped ahead of what I wrote over the last couple of days to get to an important scene, the ‘call to adventure’. This is when my protagonist is asked to accept a challenge which will propel them through the remainder of the story, and also completely change their life. The scene included a fortune reader who also leads a seance to bring in the ghost who sets up the adventure. Ghosts. Crumbling, haunted amusement park. Murder mystery and a fortune to be gained. I had a lot of ideas coming into this writing session and none of the details about the setting or manner in which the ghost presented himself. Luckily, the magic happened and things unfolded for me as I typed.
I’m getting a lot of inspiration from pictures of abandoned amusement parks and today I looked up ‘freak shows’ on wikipedia. There will be a point where I need to get legal information on wills, probate and the like. For the time being, I’m just going to write it the way I want it to go and figure out the practical details later.
Oooh, what if my protagonist is the heretofore unknown descendant of the man who is now the ghost? That would make the inheritance thing much easier to manage… hmmm… see? The magic happens. I just have to be open and ready for it.
