Audrey A McGee

It was this morning that I realized I had set a standard for myself to make blog posts every 10 days without realizing it. So this update is really NaNo 5/6 Update, but it looks much nicer with the 2/3 on my blog.

Back on the 15th, I was blessed with a whole afternoon to write in an amazing coffee shop, and a beautiful image presented itself while listening to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Act II, No. 12d, Divertissement. I was writing a very calm scene at the time, but the music so inspired me I had to stop and switch. It became a chase scene in a city I hadn’t explored yet. I briefly paused the music, jotted down a couple ideas about this city, and then put the song on repeat while writing the scene.

It all revolved around this note that would drastically change the characters’ fate — if one of them could reach the others in time. At the end of the scene, I wrote the note. It was rambling, it changed its purpose several times, but it was an outpouring of all the inklings I’d had for what the themes should be.

And I had a plot.

A couple days later, I went to outline this new book and emerged with something much simpler than I had expected, but a plot that was doable, interesting, and made sense. It also left the door open for me to explore all my unused ideas in future books.

I’ve almost hit 45,000 words for the month, though only a fraction of that is dedicated to the current plot, but I’ve started to write chronologically again, and I’m feeling confident that this plot will work. So, it looks like I won’t leave this month with less “glarity” than I started with. I just needed a bit more time.

Now the goal for the end of the month (and the end of the week) is to get as far through this plot as I can feasibly manage — maybe write at least five core scenes to get through the end of the book, so I have some anchor points to come back to after NaNo is done.

Off to another day of work and writing! Take heart, and cheerio!