I’m scootin’ along on my Nano project and let me tell you something: I LOVE IT.  I wanted to participate last year but got involved a little too late (about 12 days in to be exact). This year I started as soon as I woke up on November 1st. I had a story idea in my head for a few weeks before and once I sat down at my computer to write, it was like Secretariat bolting from the start line. I had a good 27,000 words written by day ten and I felt as if I’d found my true calling in life.

But here I am, day 21 and I’m stuck at 34k words, hovering here for the past four days. What’s my problem? Well, it all started when this thing called “life” got in the way. You know what I’m talking about: that pesky laundry pile that’s grown to monstrous proportions;children who require to eat food three times a day and aren’t satisfied with me tossing a PBJ their way; meetings with teachers and trips to basketball games and piano practice so said children can have enriched lives. Oh and don’t forget my awesome boyfriend who seems to think I should pull myself away from the laptop once in a while (and maybe shower and change from my

I lost the amount of time I’d previously had to write so much, and in losing my time, I lost a connection with my plot. I’m having to reread my story to find out “where was this going? what was I going to say next? wait, who is this character?”  In doing so, I’m being tempted by the trap that NaNo has set out to help us avoid: my WIP is screaming “EDIT MEEEEE!!!!  REWRITE MEEEEEE!!!”

I’ve let it go, really I have. I didn’t change the poorly structured sentences, I didn’t correct the gawd awful grammar staring me in the face. I even let go inconsistencies I was finding: a blonde is now a brunette, someone lived in a desert but now they live near a sea.

I get it, I can NaNoEdit in December, right?

That would be great except in my attempt to catch up and raise my suffering word count I may have messed up. I hit it hard last night and this morning, starting a new scene and introducing new characters who had only been alluded to earlier. I reread it all this morning and realized I’d changed up my plot a bit: my antagonist is too likable, too friendly (we’re supposed to hate him, you know). I’ve spent paragraphs explaining tedious details for sake of supporting the plot and helping my audience understand the bigger picture, but it rabbit-holes quite a bit AND it all feels irrelevant to the original idea I’d had.

So now I’m stuck: I have oranges thrown into my apple bowl. I can get rid of all of the oranges but then I’ve wasted time (and my word count will plummet). I could spend the time editing my oranges to look more like apples, but that’s sort of defeating the point as well. And there is no way in hell I am going to tweak my already existing apples, that’s just ridiculous. (Are y’all following me here? Too many fruit references?)

I think I am going to follow some NaNo advice and white-out (change text to white) the problematic paragraphs. They will still exist on my page though, which means my word count will be deceptively high. (Which is fine, I can account for that when I update my true word count). Or maybe I’ll just cut/paste the offending paragraphs to another doc and save it.

However, about this uploading your work to Nano – are they going to read it? Are they going to see I’m uploading a bunch of underdeveloped, under-cooked and unrelated scenes and chapters? Is anyone going to think I’ve lost my mind? Or am I safely in the same boat as everyone else: we’re doing our darnedest to work hard and hit the mark and our many paragraphs of typed-out imperfections only bring us closer to the goal which is, after all, the point the whole point and nothing but the point?

Whatchuthink?