It's not just about a novel, you know...

By week four, I really need to try to remember that.

I have just a couple pages left to go of Book One - I'm into the wrap-up scene, where my Main Character (MC) has just been rescued from the edge of apocalypse, and the convenient mentor figure is explaining why she was left all alone to combat the formidable antagonist. If my NaNovel were a movie, this is where I would be looking around for my purse and shrugging on my coat, which means this chapter will probably be cut in January.

Along with a lot of other things.

To be clear, I still like the story.  I'm glad that NaNoWriMo gave me a chance to get it out, and yet at this point, looking back (at all 300 pages).... I don't know.  I'm really dissatisfied. Despite the planning, I completely changed large elements of the world. My antagonist is creepy instead of insidious, my MC is too passive, and the mythology is all over the place.

Complicating things, there is a week left and I'm only in the mid-50,000 in terms of word count.  My goal was to write far more, and I'm participating in a word count challenge so I don't want to let down the team.

I've decided to start another story, and I've got four working ideas.  Yes, I started with two.  They keep cropping up - when I'm lying in bed half-awake, when I'm driving, while I was sitting in one of the long stretches of inaction that made up HP7.1.  Everywhere but the shower, actually.

Maybe that's where I'll find idea number 5.

But you know what, maybe that's the good thing about NaNoWriMo - a month spent thinking about writing and rolling around in my stories.

The goal was never a finished novel.  I'm not even sure the goal was a first draft.  My NaNo Book One is like an extended brainstorm.  Hopefully I can use it in January to do a meaningful rewrite.

As for the other ideas... here they are.

1. Historical fiction surrounding prison life in the 1920s and the age of gangsters and molls - with Rapunzel/fairy tale elements.
2. Prince Charming rescues the damsel, only to follow her into a life of crime - gangster story set within a fairy tale. (kind of the same story as #1, but very different setting)
3. A detective must unravel an intricate mystery surrounding the death of a young researcher at a university.
4. A private investigator's quest for a missing heirloom leads him into a world of Lovecraftian horror

I'm not sure which one I'm going to choose - they're all outlined - but tonight I'm going to start writing.  So hopefully it will be something that's fun, and that I can average about... oh... 10,000 words/day on.

So glad we're coming up on a holiday!