xTreme word count

A couple of weeks ago, I did my first NaNoWriMo check-in, and here I am back again. My goal was to finish the first draft of this manuscript by the end of November. As I write, I have nine days to go.

Yes, that was a wail of pure panic.

On the other hand, I can say I’ve only fallen behind by about 7,000 words, which is something I could conceivably make up as long as I don’t want to, say, sleep.

I did have a brilliant flash of insight this past weekend. Okay, maybe not brilliant, but important. I plot a fair bit before I start writing. I do discover stuff along the way, the plot shifts and twists, but in the end I stick fairly close to a general outline that I have in place before I begin. If I don’t have a road map, I generally write in circles. Or at least I thought this was how things worked.

However, because I’m writing this fast, I realized that I deviate far more than I suspected. Those thousand small adjustments can be handled gradually if I’m writing at a normal pace. Hurtling along at NaNo velocity meant that my average 2% variation sent me flying from an off-ramp worthy of a motorcycle stunt rider—and not in a good way. Something about speed x word count x plot variation = edit squared. There was time lost Saturday as I sat down and pondered things like plot structure and the zen of backspacing.

The words I’ve written are fine, the book is fine, but it’s not what I expected. The result of rushing through the manuscript is not that it’s bad, it’s just that I haven’t had a chance to get to know it like I normally would. During my first edit pass, I’ll be reading Chloe and Sam’s story more like a reader than the author.

Which leads me to wonder – why is it that we don’t absorb the book merely by the act of writing it? Is part of our brain switched off, so that the writing function can be in the “on” position? Or am I the only one who experiences things this way?

The creative mind is a very curious thing.