Things December Editor Me Can Worry About

I am full swing into NaNoWriMo with the goal being to write and write fast enough to get at least 50k words written before December 1st comes marching in. It is a major feat when you add in that not only do you need to come up with 50k of creative words that tell a compelling story, but you need to do it on top of a full-time job and all the other things you have going on in your life.

What this at least means for me is very little editing or even planning or worrying about the quality of the story. There are eleven other months in the year to refine and edit and clean-up the story. This month is just about writing and writing as much as possible.

This means that admittedly that my current prose are a bit of a mess and cohesive is not one of the words that I'd use to describe it. It is such a mess that in 6 weeks or so, I may be cursing current me for this Sloppy Joe of a story. Hmmmm. . . I should incorporate Sloppy Joes in this story. I should think about making them for dinner too.

As I confessed before, I don't really plan out my stories. I follow the Stephen King strategy of coming up with a 'what if' like 'person gets a text from his dead girlfriend' and see where that idea and the characters lead me. This also means that often my planning and sorting out happens while I write.

I'll be chugging along for 5 thousand words, and suddenly realize that another character isn't actually my lead or that this isn't a comedy but rather a horror. There is a lot of working out the story kinks while I go and realizing that I'll need to track back to previous chapters to fix up the new discovered direction.

What are some things that have happened that will give December Editor Christopher some work to do?

Well, I've changed most character's names about 6 times at least. Mostly due to forgetting the previous name or suddenly realizing another name reflects the personality much better.

A character that was once only visible to a specific person is now visible to everyone else but he just hides from them. This means paragraphs where he was out in the open in a classroom, now need to be fixed.

A detective started a chapter married but separated to divorced with his ex now married to his superior to relationship on the rocks. Poor guys must be an emotional mess, because that is a lot to handle for one evening.

My secondary character is proving to be a lot more fun to write and is likely going to transition into the lead role.

A guy who was dead is not dead, and his death scene actually happened to someone else.

I am approaching 25k, which means I likely will have many more corrections and changes to deal with. But that is for December.