Novel-writing this week has been a bit of a struggle, what with late nights, meetings and work all slowing me down, but still I’ve managed to get to almost 39,000 words and 107 double-spaced pages with another eleven days left in Nanowrimo and no doubt I’m going to make the goal of 50,000. Hell, I now know I can write 10,000 words in a day if I have to…. so I could even space out from now until the end and still make the word goal without too much cursing on my part. But of course I won’t do that.
The unfortunate thing is that my novel is going to be longer than 50,000 words at first draft – perhaps double the length – which means come November 30th I’ve still got another month (at least) of first-draft writing to do. It’s a little daunting to imagine doing this every day for another month. But at least now I know I can, and that at times it’s even enjoyable to do.
In the beginning I was in a real race to get words down, but since life has intervened with other priorities, I have allowed myself to approach this whole exercise from a more relaxed place, and that allows my characters a lot more room to act and say. It’s more enjoyable even as the end seems increasingly elusive. As much as it scares me, I’m also looking foward to hacking this thing apart later and going at it a second time – there’s a lot of rich material and detail I want to either hammer in or expand on still, things I’m learning all the time about people, about the historic time period in which I’ve set my story, about the subconcious and how it fills in symbols and detail all on its own. I’ve included here another description of the project, a little more detailed than the one I posted three weeks ago….. just for those of you who wanted a bit more of an idea of the story-arc. Sub-plot details include a granddaughter who lives in East Vancouver and is a single mother and writer whom Frances tells her story to over the course of the book. The granddaughter’s story of her own disappearing lover and explorations of those on the margins is starting (finally) to form a subplot of its own which isn’t described below.
“Loosely based on the life of my great-aunt Frances who was raised in rural British Columbia in a large homesteading family. A woman whose life is already difficult because of her masculine looks and overcontrolling father, when she gets pregnant out of wedlock at the age of nineteen she is shunned by most of her community. As a way to support herself and son builds her own house and store by hand and without help from anyone and proceeds to set up the first store and post office in the community of White Bay (a fictionalized place). Her itinerant lover returns after several years of depression-era living and attempts to woo Frances once more, partly out of his own desire for family but mostly because he is interested in cashing in on her hard work. It is here she must make a decision between social acceptability and continuing to live on her own terms. The main story takes place from 1915-1936 and is set in a fictional White Bay, BC and the real Salmon Arm, BC both on the shores of Shuswap Lake.”
