Thursday, November 8, 2012

NaNoWriMo Day 8 : Slogging in Bardo

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Over half of the portion of the NaNoNovel wrote today was by hand. Caught in snippets - pieces as they floated by between bouts of work. My page word count remained about the same as it has been the last couple of years when I have pieces written by hand: about 150 words per page. I'm using a wide lined composition book and writing quickly - not always legibly. So that will be another challenge when I go to type it into the novel, to read what I wrote!

My word count when I type in the words will also undoubtedly change just a little, since my count was also quick and rough. But by my count so far, 773 of the 1609 I wrote today were by hand.

As of right now, my total word count is 13,320. That is only 14 words behind the target for today if I was to be on track (it should be 13334). Not bad, considering I've been working every single day of NaNoWriMo so far. I am off work for the next two days and don't start work until mid-afternoon on the third day. So I expect I will be able to get ahead a little bit on my writing. I do have two writing dates set up: one tomorrow night and then the all-state write-in on Saturday.

So - what's happening in the novel now? Um. Well. There has been a death. The character is just coming to terms with the fact that she is dead. And her ex-lover, best friend, is preparing to help her transition into enlightenment so she doesn't have to come back again. Except that the dead person realizes an important task in the land of the living she has to repair or take care of or something (she hasn't told me what it is yet) so she can't leave this world entirely. So now we have this conflict of the one who's dead doing what she needs to in the bardo state to be able to come back and complete her karmic duties; and the one who's living is doing what she needs to do to help the spirit of the one who is dead be able to go through the light and into the other world.

Oh, no.

Not for the first time, I'm wishing I'd done just a little more prep about the bardo state. I did some. I have some bookmarks of website - reliable websites, not just Wikipedia and some are really in depth. But I have to find them. And with so much working, I've barely found time to write, sleep, swim, eat, and so on.

This is so totally NaNoNormal. Which is why I do have a four-day trip to the beach planned for the middle of the month. To catch up and to get ahead.

But for now, I'm feeling a little stuck because I don't know many of the rituals. Not enough of the rituals and the words. And I feel like I don't have enough to go on to flesh this out to 50,000 words.

So, that little creative voice inside my head says, let it go. Let it NaNoGo. Don't worry about the facts - those come later, in revisions. Just tell the story. You're trying to direct it too much, like a play, and you can't. You have to let them tell the story their way. Let it Go Go.

And she's right. I learned two NaNos ago that I can't force the story; it doesn't work and it isn't good.

Okay, Muse, back to you. Carry on.

The Nine Muses

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