Day 1

As Nanowrimo gets underway for the year I find myself struggling. There is of course the word count goal which I always find daunting at the beginning. On top of the "What did I get myself into?" feeling that always hits me at the beginning I am battling a book I am not completely firm on as far as concept and storyline. I am not a plotter by any stretch by I felt very confident in book one and I know book four very well. Somehow books two and three are feeling a little beyond my grasp.

I know that there will be a significant amount of rewrites that will come after a research trip that I cannot begin to imagine planning at the moment. I have scenes in both books two and three as well as nearly all of book four set in or around London. I have never been. While yes I could watch movies and television set in Britain to get some idea of speech patterns and I could very easily read about sites of interest there is just no way to understand the atmosphere or capture a particular feeling of a place without being there in person.

Even without the needed trip I can draft the book but the characters are fighting me. I am lost within the first five hundred words and it is making me consider for the first time stepping away from my goal. I honestly love this series. I believe it has strong potential so I want to do it justice which includes writing it in the first place. For some reason though, my characters are being extremely difficult. When I wrote the first book in the series every character was talkative. They were just dying for me to get to November so I could jump into the story.

Today I spent an hour rewriting the first two hundred words over and over. I am still not happy. This is not an internal editor thing as I always tell people the most important part beyond simply putting words on paper is to put the editor in a tiny room in the back of your brain and give them a new red pen to play with once you are ready for their work to begin. Until then they need to stay put. I am sure that once I get into the real meat of the story I will be able to get things flowing more easily but this is the first time I have stared at and been mocked by my blinking cursor on the angry blank page. I shall push forward but it has not been the day one I was prepared for.