Thursday, November 15, 2007

Halfway Through My NaNo Novel

Today, I sailed past the halfway mark of the 50,000 words of my NaNo novel. I wrote 25,006 words so far. I am pleased no end with my progress because I have only another 25,000 words to hammer out in the next fifteen days though at the rate at which the book is moving my word count is likely to be around 60,000 words. Now that I’ve managed to cross 25,000 words I am confident I can do it.

It has been a crazy month so far with the mind focused on only the writing of the novel and the day’s word count. On some days I was able to write two thousand words (the limit I set myself for each day) and on a few days I was not able to write even five hundred words. One day I managed to write 4500 words though I had actually planned to write five thousand words that day. In the next fifteen days I plan to write five thousand words on some day.

But writing the NaNo novel has been a learning experience. It is certainly insane to attempt to write a novel in thirty days but I feel there are advantages to this method. First, you get the novel down from your mind to paper (or screen). Then next, you begin to think of actually finishing it. If you persist then you can finish the novel and I am determined to finish it come what may.

Writing the novel, I am feeling some of the lessons on writing I read about, begin to sink in. The basic rule is to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Then the other rules about having characters, dialogue, etc are also beginning to sink in. But what has permeated more deeply is the advice I read somewhere that a writer should think of his book in terms of scenes. Writing my NaNo novel I am trying to follow this advice and am actually thinking of the next scene and how many words it will take to write it. I hope to actually practice all the bits of advice that I’ve read so far.

What is helping me is that my novel is a satirical magic realism novel in which I am able to write literally anything that comes to my mind. Much of it is pure drivel and utter nonsense but I feel that once I finish it, it will begin to make sense (at least to me!). I cannot say I am having fun writing the book since it is making me edgy and impatient to finish it as soon as possible. But it is one wonderful learning experience that I hope to repeat every year from now onwards.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Way to go Vinod bhai. Can't wait to read the final output.
Hari miyan

Vinod Ekbote said...

Thanks Hari,

Maybe you'll have to wait a couple of years until I revise my novel into a Booker Prize winner. :-)

Vinod