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The Nano Chronicles: Week 2

Natalie Juteau

November 10, 2014

Well hello there, CSU. It’s now the second week of November, and the second week of NaNoWriMo. I am actually feeling quite dejected at this point. I should be at 15,003 words, but I’m only at 5,339. If this were a vlog, I’d probably slap my face on the keyboard and then proceed to cry big, woman-child tears. But this isn’t a vlog, so I’ll have to settle for complaining via words. Boo.

http://gty.im/183926925

All right, I really shouldn’t be complaining. It is my fault for falling behind already (I still blame Halloween, though.) The second week of NaNo is always the hardest, so I’m currently feeling double the pressure. I haven’t even cracked open my Scrivener document in two days. I think I’m afraid of my novel. (Ask any author and they’ll probably report having felt something similar at some point during their writing career.) I know where my story is going, for the most part, but I’m just a bit stuck right now.

I’m in the middle of writing a scene that I thought would be a blast, but it is actually turning out rather boring. I’m not sure there is even a good reason for this scene to be included, but this is NaNo, so I just write and don’t look back. There is absolutely no editing during November. I’m not an edit-as-I-go kind of writer anyway, though. The first draft is the skeleton of the story. You have to get it built before you can start covering it with muscles and ligaments and skin. Sometimes the skeleton is messed up: you may have the tibia and the fibula flip-flopped, or maybe you’re missing one phalange, but you won’t know until you’re all finished putting it together and can step back and take a good look. So at this point, I just have to keep building my skeleton, and I can fix the phalanges once I’m all finished.

This week promises to be rather cold, which means I won’t be giving many horseback riding lessons. That also means that I’ll be cooped up inside with nothing to do…what a perfect opportunity to force myself to work on my novel! Fingers crossed that I actually follow through and do it. Only time will tell.

Enjoy the snow, CSU. You’ll find me in leg-warmers this week.

Natalie can be reached at blogs@collegian.com

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