Week Three, and I'm still slogging on...

My best friend, Jen, had a baby yesterday, her second, a little girl called Abigail Hannah. Luckily, she was born by caesarean - I say "lucky" because she weighed 9lbs 12 ozs! Ouch!

I've written just over 28000 words of my NaNoWriMo novel so far, and am on schedule - just. I've been finding it hard to sit still and concentrate for long periods of time, so I've been doing three sessions of thirty minutes a day, roughly, which allows me to crank out the necessary words for the daily target. I haven't been feeling particularly inspired writing Dorcas, to be honest. I think possibly that having had the idea in my head for an entire year has meant that it has not only gone off the boil over time, ie all that initial excitment has gone, but also everything I do write just doesn't compare to the grand masterpiece I had in my head. Although, I think I may have reached a break-through point yesterday, when I reached a bit of the story that I hadn't got planned out, and I regained some of that enthusiasm again when I started inventing things off the top of my head. However, today it's back to the plan again. Next year, I'm going to decide what I'm writing for NaNoWriMo two weeks before, and that'll be it.

At the weekend, I attended a SF and Fantasy writing course, led by Damien G Walter, and I think the course may have fixed the problems I've been having with the opening of Inter Vivos. I think the reason why I've been finding it so difficult to re-write the beginning is that there was no definitive inciting incident, nothing structurally that said "and this is what happens that motivates the rest of the story". Instead, there are several events that contribute, but this leaves the reader less engaged in the story. So after NaNo, rewrite number 3 of IV will begin. I am determined to get it finished!

I've also got a few ideas for short stories that I'm going to try to work on at weekends after I've finished my NaNo words. I really want to target some of the short story markets. Busy, busy, busy!