It is officially week two of National Novel Writing Month. Can you believe it? In just one week, over 200,000,000 (that’s two-hundred million) words have been written by approximately 110,000 kids, teens, and adults all over the world!
Wasn’t week one fun? I think week one is the second best week of NaNoWriMo (one small step behind the glory of week four). Last week, your fingers were nimble, your ideas were fresh, your characters were new and adventurous, and your plot was developing right in front of your eyes, sometimes with little to no effort on your part.
Week two is a little more challenging. If you’re anything like me, you might have a case of what I like to call the now whats: the sudden realization that you have no idea what should happen next. Maybe you’ve written most of your story and you aren’t even close to your word-count goal. Characters might not be doing what you wanted them to, the plot twist you wanted to work into your novel isn’t working, or maybe everything has just come to a stand still. Suddenly your characters are all sitting around in a room, looking at each other blankly, talking about nothing.
It may sound something like this:
“What do you wanna do?”
“Dunno what do you wanna do?”
“I asked you first.”
“How ‘bout you, Tim, what do you wanna do?
“No idea, how ‘bout you think of something.”
And so on.
Though the now whats may seem paralyzing for a moment, they can actually be really helpful in moving your novel in new and unexpected directions. Week two is all about introducing strange new characters, sudden UFO invasions, unexpected magical phenomena, and random cameos from robotic elves from the future. If your characters seem bored, make things exciting for them. Give them new challenges to overcome. Introduce new settings. Develop those supporting characters.
You will find out a lot about your novel in the coming week, and your plot might change drastically. You may find that your main character is a real bore, and that his or her side-kick is the real hero. You may have started off writing a novel about fire-breathing dragons, but find that you would rather write a sci-fi story about time traveling robotic elves. That is fine. Change is a good thing.
Or you may be one of the lucky ones with a novel that will go along swimmingly in this next week.
We are all jealous.
Good luck in your second week!
Best,
Tavia Stewart