It’s almost the end of January, and I’m already setting myself deadlines. My calendar is already pockmarked with various page numbers, chapters, quizzes to be completed — and this is just for the next few weeks. On top of that, I’m going to make myself sit down and have a finished, draft copy of my novel ready by June 30th. Right now, I’m sitting at about 83,000 words (thanks to my 50,633 from this year’s NaNoWriMo.)

This seems outrageous, mostly to me, because usually this is where I stop a draft and start over completely. I’ve done it twice before, and I’m terrified that I’m going to pause halfway through, reach back to the beginning, and make my protagonists leprechauns or something, and then the rest of the story wouldn’t work because they weren’t small, mystical, or Irish. This honestly haunts my every waking thought.

Where I stand right now, I’m about ¹/₃rd through the novel. All of the exposition is done, most of the characters have been introduced, everything is screwed up, and a lot of other things are in motion, namely death and destruction and probably some evil babies or something. I’m not quite caught up there. Now, 50,000 words in a month is remarkably doable if you sacrifice a bit of sleep and tranquilize your control-freak inner editor, who says that “squirm” is a much better word than “wiggle,” and that you really don’t know anything about botany, except for what you looked up on Wikipedia to make sure you weren’t putting tropical plants in a tundra setting. (Did you know there’s such a thing as an “Air Potato?”).

But goodness, I need to write at least 100,000 words in five months without slacking off. The word count doesn’t scare me as much as the idea that I will have to constantly motivate myself over half a year to get this done. Considering that formatting alone will take me a month and a crate of Kleenexes and maybe some Lasik, And editing — oh boy, editing. Editing will probably take me the rest of my life. I really don’t have any time to waste. Other than the time I’m taking to write about this. If only novel writing was this easy.

I have learned one thing. If you let the story just race out of you, the plot usually comes together on its own — roughly, but it’s still viable. I’ve gotten away with preparing one-line outlines, or none at all, and my chapters seem to have seamed themselves together. Additionally, because I’ve been working with these characters for so long, I’ve stopped trying to reinvent the characters themselves. They’re set in stone. They won’t change, even if I tried to. But I can change their roles. I leave blanks in my plot for certain roles to be filled, and when I’m close enough to the scene, the right name fits into place. That way, everything that needs to happen is taken care of, and hopefully by the right character.

Editing this beast is going to be hilarious. I’ll post snippets along the way. Here’s one for the road:

Additionally

I took a crack at illustrations, and I threw some up (more or less) on some of my pages. I’m not sure what aesthetic I want to convey. I always have the hardest time illustrating things for myself, because I could do almost anything and get away with it, almost being the key word. I tried a little grunge, a little bathroom stall, a little whimsy. I wanted them to be somewhat rough, so wherever I’ve colored outside of the lines, it’s not my fault — I mastered neat coloring very early on (except with paints) — I did it on purpose.

Let me know how you like them!