National Novel Writing Month is in full swing. Five full days have passed, and writers around the world have started their novels. As of when I loaded the NaNoWriMo page at 6:50 this morning, there have been 520,228,322 collective words written. That is amazing for 5 days.
But back to day 1. I got home from work Monday morning, sat down to write, and realized something slightly troubling: despite my outlining and planning, I had yet to come up with a name for my MC. It was already 8 hours into NaNoWriMo at that point, so I wasn't exactly behind, but I wanted to get started writing as soon as I could, and since I'm terrible with names, I didn't want to waste the time then trying to come up with one.
So I just sat down and started writing. I can always go in and edit a name in for her later, I figured. Better to get the words down to start with.
The thing is, I still have not come up with a name for her. I broke the 10,000 word line last night, and currently have 10,175 words. But have no name for my MC. Over 10,000 words, during which time the only ways I have referred to my MC is by using 'she' and 'her'. That's a lot of words to do that, which got me thinking, wondering, can I write this entire thing without naming her? I'm fully intending to come up with a name and edit it in when I'm done, but for now, can I finish this without a name?
And let me just say I love working in Scrivener. I am just hoping that I can keep up this pace through the whole month so I get my 50,000 words by the end of November, because then I'll get a 50% off coupon for when Scrivener for Windows is officially released.
I'm not sure if the writing is coming along better this year than it has in past years because I have a better outline this time round, or if it is because of working in Scrivener (though that really is nice and easy to do). It might be both. Either way, my novel isn't quite writing itself, but it is coming along very nicely, nice and quickly. 4600 words written on Thursday quickly.
To sum up the last five days: Scrivener, loving it! Writing, really good! Well, maybe not good quality, but really good quantity, despite some unrelated shoulder and wrist pains. And I'm really enjoying writing it.
But as we go into day 6, how are you doing? Have you come up with any personal challenges, or is simply trying to write 50,000 words in 30 days going to be more than enough for you?
