Instead of calling my writing WIP (work in progress) "The Novel" or the '08 NaNoNovel, I've updated it to be the NaNN Novel: "Needs a New Name" Novel. But, as my friend Jenny pointed out today, when it gets to an editor and publisher, they will probably rename it, anyway!
Last I wrote about NaNN, I was wondering if I was straying too far with the preparations: research, margin notes, note cards, an outline, and many pages of conflicts or character flaws or things to delete/expand. Shortly after that, I made some section revisions and too scissor and tape and started moving pages around after I reordered the cards. Which was after I wrote down a plot of what has to come before what in order of events for the story to work.
I took a little detour on the web during my writing time with Jenny. You see, a part of NaNN deals with possession and/or multiple personality disorder. I wanted to do some research on those to see where they overlap and where they diverge because in my mystery-ghost story there are questions about just this issue. I was fascinated by what I was finding and then realized that - voila - I had indeed become distracted and lost the focus of the reason I was in that space, with latte and laptop at hand and Jenny on the other side of the table.
So I bookmarked a few things and went back to NaNN with new energy because this little conundrum in NaNN will actually work. And what I saw will be interesting when I get back to reading it more in depth.
The real movement of NaNN today, however, came when I started inserting some section updates I've done elsewhere, as part of an assignment or just working on the novel. Seven major sections have been edited and inserted. I know there will be more rewrites on those, because they were done with different foci and at different points of time in isolation. But it's still exciting to be updating the master document.
And, yes, I have the original safely stored somewhere else.
It is now just over 61k words and growing.
The story is being refined and cleaned up.
I have actually begun the revision process. And it feels great.
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