Happy Thursday, Aledan Merfolk! We’re on Day 5 of NaNo, and so far writing Enfields has been like pulling teeth. As I’ve mentioned before, the worldbuilding is a hot mess, the beat sheet says helpful things like “something bad happens here”, and most of the cast has no name yet. And I rather suck at describing *anything* in my first drafts. Basically: I can’t wait to edit this steaming pile of shit.
Yep. Usually my first drafts are all floating heads in the void, with pages and pages of dialogue. I rely way too heavily on dialogue, which is why I decided the main character in Enfields is mute. I need to get better at body language and props, and I figured this would be a good way to do it, but holy freaking fox kits is it difficult for me to write a first draft with little to no dialogue (or at least all one-sided dialogue).
I did make it to a really great scene that introduces the bad guy, though, and that was a breeze to write, even with one-sided dialogue. I love me some bad guys. Hopefully now that I’ve hit a part of the book that I know, it won’t be so much like pulling teeth anymore. Despite the difficulty with this first draft, I’ve been getting about 1k/day, which isn’t bad. It’s not NaNo-fast, but I’ve won NaNo plenty of times in the past and no longer feel the need to prove I can do it. If I can pull out all of Enfield’s teeth in four months, I’ll be happy.
And then I get to edit 🙂
In non-NaNo news, a bit of sadness: PonyFest15 is cancelled, because I only received two entries 🙁 I’ve been too busy to promote it properly, and everyone else has been too busy doing NaNo to enter, I guess. We’ll try again next year at the normal time (Sept/Oct).
I’ll still have a custom pony for you this weekend. Have a wonderful weekend full of words, Aledans!
I so feel your pain!
We’ll wallow in pain together ^_^