Yesterday, on a walk with my sister, I had an idea for how I could participate in NaNoWriMo this year.
Basically, the idea I’ve been working on all this time is too long to fit into a single book. I’ve gone back and forth on this because some part of me likes the idea of a single, epic-length book that jumps back and forth in time – like Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex – but I keep coming back to the reality that it’s not practical, that very few people want to read a book as long as this would be (particularly from an author they don’t know), and also that the jumping back and forth causes narrative problems. The obvious solution would be to break it up, probably into three parts.
Anyway, the point I’ve reached with my rewrite now is close to where part one would end, and part two begin. Also, when I do reach part two, the rewrite’s going to get a lot harder because that section is basically equivalent to the “third quarter” of my first draft, which was already really scungy and nowhere near elaborated enough (because I was impatient to reach the climax, lol). I have tons and tons of ideas for how to expand this section and make it better and more interesting. But I need to turn those ideas into a cohesive outline, complete with causal links between the different set pieces.
NaNoWriMo is supposed to be about writing a first draft of a fresh book, although people certainly do cheat (as I have, once, in 2017 – that was when I finished this story’s first draft!). It seems to me like that kind of energy might be exactly what I need if I’m going to spin out what was once just a few rushed chapters into an entire book’s worth of story. Since 2017, my progress has already been so slow and stop-start – if I don’t do something to get shit written quickly, I’ll probably be a grandma before I can get this story done, if I can even achieve it then 🙃
I’m sure I know some other people planning to take part in NaNoWriMo this year, so if you’d like to add me as a writing buddy, I think (?) you should be able to find me on the NaNoWriMo website here . Yeah, I made a brand-new fresh profile instead of resurrecting one of my old ones. Out with the old, in with the new, right? 😇
