Wri50KInAMo Day 16
In light of the recent events happening at the NaNoWriMo, I will no longer be using or participating in the online event. Instead, I will continue to conduct my experiment on transparency and write 50K in the month of November on my own in a personal setting I’m referring to as Wri50KInAMo. I have deleted my NaNoWriMo account and will be keeping public accountability here on my Substack going forward.
daily summary 📅
I wish I were the sort of person who can write out of order, but I simply cannot move forward until I know where I’ve come from. I’m a linear writer for the most part, and that apparently also means I can’t move forward in writing my long, shitty synopsis until I fix the beginning either. I swear this is the fifth time I’ve started the beginning again and I would honestly just move on if I didn’t have the sense that if I just get this right, if I just set up the stakes properly, the rest of the story would fall into place. I didn’t have that sense with ZHARA or with AMI; with those two, I continued writing because I knew where they were headed. I don’t know where GUARDIANS 3 is headed yet. I haven’t discovered that yet. Somehow I just know that getting the beginning right means that I will finally—finally—crack what the point of this book will be.
Until then, I guess I’ll just keep writing in circles.
daily process ⏱️
9:10AM. The coffee is just not hitting this morning.
12:30PM. Took Pollux on a long walk, then got lost in trying to organizing my long, shitty synopsis via Plottr. Oops. Anyway, I should feed myself.
1:26PM. Lunch consumed and oh my god, the amount of food coma I am enduring at the moment. I need a nap so badly, but I also need to work. Not a lot of words have been written in the long, shitty synopsis, mostly because I’m trying to figure out how to properly set up everything I need to. Everything feels so recursive, like I’m just going around in circles, but I know that I really am making progress, even if it doesn’t feel like I have anything to show for it at the moment. I suppose it’s because I’m a linear writer that I can’t really move forward until I figure out where I can from. So the beginning has to be “right” before I can make real headway on the story, even in the long, shitty synopsis.
1:34PM. Oh my god, [redacted word vomit of epiphany].
3:37PM. 854 words. I am essentially just drafting the beginning AGAIN.
calls this “vulture writing,” where you just…circle over and over and over again. Ugh. I just need to get the story down but my brain won’t let me continue until I figure out this stupid, tiny detail of how [redacted].4:39PM. Today is a “think so hard my brain hurts” kind of writing day. 901 words, but I’ve really written and deleted about 1000. I wish my writing process weren’t so fucking redundant and a mess. It really does feel like a miracle that I’ve finished writing one book, let alone four? How? How have I managed to write them all?
That’s Day 16 of Wri50KInAMo done! How about y’all? Any successes? Failures?
Following your process has been fascinating because I am so similar. I write the opening so many times until it feels closer to Right. Usually by about the 40k mark I can at least do the shitty synopsis until the end. I wish I could trash draft the whole thing but that doesn't seem to work for me.