Spent way longer than I should have playing around with a new header photo. I’m not overly jazzed by the scenic panoramic view, but I also don’t want to use a kid or cat photo, photo of a typewriter, or a stack of leatherbound books. Such are the cliche-hazards of writerly blogging, I guess.
NaNoWriMo continues. The last five days have produced a fecund 8,180 words, some of which I am happy with. To be honest I still am not sure about this current NaNo, but the habit of doing it is a good one, and I hope (as I always hope) that the habits will continue into the end of this year and the next one.
I have a sore back, that somehow sprung up after a run on Wednesday. Nothing about that run was in any way different from my usual ones (that I’ve been doing since somewhere around July), so I’m concerned that my body is responding so differently. Someone suggested shoes, which I guess is a possibility, though my legs, ankles, feet, etc. all feel fine. I will have to go for a walk today and see if I can get the kinks out.
It’s been a busy week for me, with lots of appointments and social get-togethers, and child play-dates, and I’m really happy that today I have absolutely nothing on and I can recharge a little. Still not 100% sure about the NaNo. But that’s the point of the first draft, isn’t it, you can wander off in whatever direction you choose. I’ve got 25 more days to try and empty my pockets on this thing, and see what falls out.
Traditionally I’ve been at pantser with these things, and while I did do some pre-writing on this year’s story, I’ve found that just tracking various elements that turn up each day, and thinking about how those can be developed and drawn out throughout the story, has given me enough focus for each day’s writing. Each day I write down a few of the different threads that I can expand on, and as I’m using an alternating POV structure, that too gives me a constraint to work with, in addition to where the story went (with the other character) in the previous scene / chapter. I haven’t really written this way in the past, but I’m finding it is working, at least so far.