NaNoWriMo Update: Week Three & Music Inspiration

Week three—and NaNoWriMo is still kicking my butt. And with less than six days to go until the finish line . . . well. Let’s just say I’m not holding up high hopes with winning this year. Still—I’m doing my best not to get hung up on the fact that I’m probably not going to win, and focusing on the words I’m getting down on the page instead.

The thing that’s eating at me is I have to keep reminding myself THE FIRST DRAFT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PERFECT. IT DOES NOT. I’ve spent the better part of this year revising and polished FRAYED, and it’s hard to let myself be crappy again. Drafting a novel from scratch is hard (even though it’s probably my favourite stage of writing a novel), and it’s difficult to go from a practically finished novel to a rough, crappy one. Once I let go of that part I know finishing the manuscript will be so much easier (it’s just getting to that point which is hard.)

Staring a new manuscript is hard. I’m still getting to know my characters and my world and its history, and even though that part of writing is exciting as hell—it’s still scary as hell. I’m pretty sure I’ve settled on a title after debating over it internally since the beginning of the month; I know where the story is heading and I’ve figured out my ending; I’m getting to know my characters as the chapters go by.

So basically, whenever I’m in that frame of mind—that “oh my gosh can I really even do this!?” frame of mind—I go back to music. Music inspires 99.9% of EVERYTHING I write and I literally cannot write without it (especially artists like Two Steps From Hell which has epicness oozing from every note.) Actually—I go back to this song every time I feel a little lost when writing this one.

(Why yes. I do listen to a lot of trailer/soundtrack music.)

Actually—“Flight of the Silverbird” was what inspired the story in the first place, so it’s my go-to song whenever I have no idea what the hell I’m doing next. Like I mentioned in my NaNo prep post, I basically have three things about the novel outlined: the beginning, middle, and end. This in previous years has worked fine for me—so it’s definitely a concept I’ll be sticking with. The rest is a blur of scenes that come to me as I write and everything will go under heavy revisions . . . buuuuuuut I’m trying not to think of that right now. And then, of course, there are the scenes of this novel I’m aching to write, and the little bits of worldbuilding I can’t wait to explore and expand. A scene of which was inspired by Alexadre’s Desplat’s “Crosswords” (from The Imitation Game—which I loved.)

So for me, less than six days to go—and around 40k more to write. HUZZAH.

Keep writing, all you NaNoWriMo-ers!