More NaNo woes

Sometimes, you’ll hear a voice in your head saying, “Maybe if you write out those fic ideas, you’ll have inspiration for your original novel afterwards.”

…THE VOICE, IT ABSOLUTELY LIES.

What I want to have the inspiration to write: my original novel for NaNo
What I have the inspiration to write: So Many Other Fics instead

Word of advice…

For the love of all that is holy, never keep two different Word documents open at once.

And never keep different kinds of docs in the same place.

Sincerely,

Someone who very nearly just sent a 434-page Word doc of MFU oneshots to her boss.

*HEADDESK*

So, a year ago, I had a 500-page Word document that held every single drabble/oneshot I’d ever written. In a bid to be a bit more organized, I divided that 500-page document into different ones for each fandom.

…And now, a year later, my MFU oneshot doc alone is over 400 pages. That’s not including the multichapter fics, either.

…Well then.

Sorta-daily NaNo update:

I’ve made peace with the fact that this isn’t going to be done on the 22nd. Just when I think I’ve narrowed down the plotlines, more stuff keeps happening. I knew the 22nd was a very ambitious goal, and it was more for myself than anything else–would have been nice to have finished it on my hero’s bday, but I know now the important thing is to focus on getting it done right, with the final product being something worthy of being dedicated to him.

That being said, the story itself is progressing beautifully! Lionheart and Kid are progressing with trying to solve the mystery at hand. They’re also trying to remain incognito since Lionheart’s father is after them, so they’re trying to pass themselves off as an entertainment duo rather than vigilantes and are trying to draw more customers to the Moonlit Gulch Saloon & Inn–

Kid couldn’t help but snark as
Lionheart made his way over, balancing a precarious stack of Shakespeare plays.

“Lionheart, we’re only going to be
entertaining during dinner hours,” Kid said, staring at the stack. “We’re not going to be doing an all-night
festival!”

“You know, I wonder how many we
could get to come to that if we did,” Lionheart wondered aloud.

Daily NaNo check-in: as far as word count goes, I am on target. As far as the actual story… There are complications.

For one thing, at 20k out of 50k words, I’m only on chapter 7, my villain only just showed up out of flashback for the first time, and everything still seems so very rushed (namely the traveling–somehow, I pictured the duo having a lot of shenanigans as they go from place to place, but I ended up just summarizing the travels).

…It was at this moment that I realized that this thing is going to be more than 50k words.

So my new plan is now this: continue with what I’m doing in the rushed pace and get all the major events and plotlines of the book done and win the 50k NaNo challenge, hopefully by the 22nd.

And then, take the time to put in all the spacing and side-events as I edit so that it has the proper pacing.