Novel not making complete sense

keep writing. write each story line that comes into your head. if you can interweave them, awesome, if you have to stop writing some and focus on others, great. because either way, you'll be writing.

then again, my own personal nano theory is that it's nano. it's 50,000 words written in 30 days. i left "sense" behind when i signed up for this madness, along with "plot", "characterization" and all of the other things of which "good" writing is composed.
for me, nano is all about having fun writing, and hanging with my friends. there's always something that i can take away from the story in the end, and that's really more than i should have expected, methinks.

but i have low expectations for quality and high expectations for quantity. because i'm a mad, mad woman. =)

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

thanks. i like the quote particularly. and i'm most intrigued by your name, "cornbread"!

I think if you do want some consistency, it doesn't hurt to make a decision about things like characters' ages, height, or mole locations (stuff that can't be changed that easily), note them on a chart or notes, and stick with them - if you want to do that. I personally prefer to have my 28 year old character to stay 28, and not 21 in another chapter (unless there's some detail, like he says, "I remember when Reagan was president," and this is somehow an important detail; in which case, make a decision and stick with it).

But, don't stress it if certain details do get lost in the writing - ex., your left-handed murder suspect ends up being right handed, or the detective's walking cane appears, disappears, and re-appears (this cane issue did arise in Anne Perry's (published!) book, "Face of a Stranger" - so even published writers have this consistency problem! (okay, possibly because the copy editor didn't catch it, but I'd say it's forgiveable). You can always fix things later during the editing time next month or next year, and some things might be easily explained away in your next chapter (ex., if your character's hair color becomes blonde, rather than brown; you easily say that she had it dyed at some point).

My novel so far isn't necessarily making sense because the work of my lawyer characters is not really making sense (along the lines of "We're suing... somebody... for something..."), but I'm just going to keep on going and figure it out later, hopefully. Maybe. Whatever.

Just my two cents on the topic. Just keep writing.

2007: "Bread and Circuses"
2008: "The Mystery of the Venerable Chalice"
Blogging at www.triscribe.com

thanks, amywuzhere! a friend loaned me some natasha bedingfield CD's, and i love that song. and i think it's esp appropriate during the writing frenzy that is nano.

as for the name, i used to work at a youth center, and one day one of the teens just started calling me cornbread out of the blue. he claimed that i reminded him of cornbread. it was odd, but so was he, and since it wasn't a disrespectful name, i let him get away with it. then, a few days later, i was signing up for nano and needed a name. i couldn't think of one, and then i remembered my new nickname. and it's stuck.

it's kind of fun to show up at a write-in and hear the room scream "cornbread"! it's like being "norm" on cheers. it's particularly awesome when it happens before we've managed to scare away all of the other people from wherever we are.

hope you have as much fun nano-ing as i do!

cornbread

"drench yourself in words unspoken
live your life with arms wide open
today is where your book begins
the rest is still unwritten"
-"unwritten" by natasha bedingfield

write hard!

I say just go with it for now. These things often sort themselves out later, and you have all of the rest of the year to go back and correct things that became wrong two chapters after you wrote them.

For example: in my first NaNo, i killed the same guy twice (in a world where death is permanent). Woops. I made a vague mental note to go fix it, and i did, sometime in July. If i'd stopped to fix it in November, i probably would have totally derailed the whole project.

Not the sharpest clown in the happy meal.

You're not in this to make sense. You're in this to make wordcount.

Write whatever you can as fast as you can. When it's done, you'll know which bits are worth keeping. You can throw away the rest, and then wrap a framework around the good bits so that you actually have a consistent story.

When you know there's an inconsistency but you can't be bothered to go back and rewrite something else to make it consistent - and you shouldn't, at least not until November is over - you can just put FIXTHIS (in all caps) at that point in the text. You can then search for all the FIXTHISes later, when you edit your work.

Hey, that's a good idea! Thanks.

Barbara/Myth Maker
http://www.roadsidegems.blogspot.com

Barbara/Myth Maker
http://www.roadsidegems.blogspot.com