I have this notion that a novel must be written in a certain fashion, by starting on page one, then page two, and progressing forward in an iterative fashion until I reach the end (or in the case of nanowrimo, fifty thousand words).
Fool.
I have less than nine thousand words left to make the finish line, and I’m not even halfway through telling the story.
But there are bits I have in my head that I’ve been holding back, because I hadn’t written (or finished thinking out) the parts that lead up to them. But they’re there, congealed in my brain like leftover turkey in gravy, waiting to be wedged out and slapped on the screen. It feels like cheating to use them – it means my first 50k won’t be a continuous read, but then, it wouldn’t really be a pleasurable read for anyone in its current state. And the point of nanowrimo is to get over the inhibitions that keep us back and to pound letters into words, words into sentences, and sentences into a semblance of a story.
So I think the time has come. Beware fellow wordsmiths, I smell a storm coming this week, and it sounds like a rabid monkey at a typewriter.