Apologies to those of you hanging on my every word for not writing a post yesterday - I was having to travel for (real life) work and didn't get a chance to be online long enough to write one. However, I was travelling by train - on a company that hasn't yet worked out this whole wi-fi thing - and had my laptop with me, so was able to do some writing. The result? I think I need to travel by train more often. Over 1000 words on each leg of the journey made it a really good day's writing, and on top of a good day on Friday, I'm having a very good start to February.
Totals - at the end of Friday I was at 37,633 and by the time I got home last night, I'd reached 39,782.
Of course, it's all still very much first draft stuff, but it's still fun to write. At the moment, I'm just detailing a conversation between my two main characters, most of which likely won't end up in the final version, but writing it out is invaluable for me in coming to know about their characters. It tells me about their pasts and how they've got to where they are, and also lets me find out and explore their different voices, exploring their ways of saying things.
Generally, there's a lot going into this draft that's background and stuff that I know won't make the cut, but it's important to me in shaping the story and learning about it. This is the time for letting ideas take root and flow to their logical extent, and the editing, rewriting and cutting can take place later, once this draft has shown me what's important. Though when my target's only 1000 words a day (unlike NaNoWriMo's 1667), I don't have to be quite as demented in what I include to hit the daily target - I've managed to resist full-on infodumps so far.
Actually, that makes me think of one advantage of having viewpoint characters who don't know what's going on - you get to explain what they learn as they go along, not infodump everything they already know to catch the reader up. Obvious statement is obvious, of course, but it is Sunday morning.
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