Goodbye, Week 2!

I think the slump is over! Thank goodness!

Week 2 is always the hardest. Once Week 3 starts the only potential hurdle left is the 20k doldrums. If you’re lucky you might already have 30k or more. If you’re like me and fell behind, the entire stretch from 20k to 30k is still ahead of you.

This month I’ve been juggling writing the final pieces of The Dreams and writing Inbetween. I still haven’t decided whether juggling two projects makes NaNoWriMo easier or not. I guess we’ll see if I end the month with 50k and decide that way.

Yesterday I finally figured out scene by scene the very end of The Dreams. Up until then, even just a few chapters away from the intended ending, those final scenes were snippets of dialog, ideas, and locations with no concrete structure to hold all those ideas together. Now I have it and before the end of the month, I’m going to use it.

Looking at Inbetween I can already see that I’m going to have a lot of work to do when I go to revise. The Dreams had structure. That isn’t to say that Inbetween lacks structure, but it isn’t as obvious where the boundaries between chapters would be. I’m trying not to worry about it while I’m writing. It’s the first draft and just writing the story is the most important part of the first draft, but I’d be lying if I said the later structure of the novel isn’t always in the back of my head.

I’m really looking forward to the rest of this month. Last week was extremely stressful and I could not see myself winning, but all of that has changed. I won’t give all the credit to the shift from week 2 to 3. At least part of it came from seeing the light at the end of The Dreams tunnel. That was the high point of my month so far.

Did week 2 treat you well? Are you looking forward to week 3? How’s your word count looking?