typing and weeping

How do you hammer out the first draft and have you ever participated in Nanowrimo?

I was a few books in before I heard of Nanowrimo and I was already superstitious about changing things in case the whole soufflé collapsed, so the answer to the second bit is "no".

About the first bit, though . . .

The ideal is 2000 words a day, 5 days a week, for 10 weeks, giving a 100K first draft in under a season. It doesn't always work out. More likely is 3000 confident words a day to start with, typed with brio and a song in the heart, then what my husband calls the Big Early Wobble, when I select four or more of the following remarks and combine them in any order:

• I can't do this
• This time it's real
• I've never understood less about a story
• I don't know who these characters are
• There's no colour
• It's too thin
• This isn't a world
• This has never happened before
• I have never felt like this before
• Why do you always tell me I always do this?

Neil counters with a handful chosen from among these rejoinders:

• Yes, you have
• Yes, pretty much word for word
• Not just last time, every time
• I bet it'll be okay
• Why not write it and see if maybe it's okay
• I honestly believe it might be okay
• Yes, but I really think you have
• Yes, you totally have, you crazy lunatic

But here's the thing. The book I'm writing right now is 57K words long after [trots over to calendar to count] 24 working days. Hey!

So now I have to decide between a. faking a late Big Early Wobble and b. doing without one altogether. Truth be told I'm worried that without the BEW the book won't be any good. I'm having a Midway Meta-Wobble.

But I think, all things considered, I'll just bash on, typing and weeping. I'm quite fond of some of the characters in this one - they make me laugh - and as well as that I'm not sure what's going to happen next and I'm interested to find out. In fact I stopped typing today at the end of a pretty torrid scene with the words [trots over to other computer to remind self]:

"The colour drained from D----'s face until she was candle-white and her lips were almost blue.
'What is it?' I asked her."

Right now, I have no idea and that's why I love being a pantser. I'd bet my morning coffee that when I sit down and start typing tomorrow I'll realise what it is and it'll be something hidden away in what I've already written, like an Easter egg, waiting to pop up in the story. It feels like magic.

Once I've written another three drafts, fixed the glitches, killed the stinky bits, smashed the Easter eggs and sprinkled the crumbs from beginning to end of the story, maybe some of it'll look a wee bit like magic too.