@jayeless I ran out of steam when I ran out of outline. I’m dragging it forward with stream of consciousness scenes and backstory. If I do NaNo again, I’m going in with a full outline.
@BenSouthwood Oof, yeah. Sometimes stream-of-consciousness writing and backstories can be useful, and clarify stuff for yourself as the author, but it is hard to write tens of thousands of words of that! I definitely intended to have a full outline but I just ran out of time… hopefully next time (assuming there is a next time) I'll be more organised!
@jayeless Yes, this is a learning curve for me. There’s a lot of stuff that’s bubbled through that wasn’t planned, but it’s been a struggle writing the bits where I have no idea where it’s going.
@BenSouthwood Yeah, I can relate to that. For me, some times have been tough (even when I've had an outline it's turned out to be inadequate in several places), but there've also been those "aha!" moments, where a good idea came to me that didn't when I was just outlining – like I needed to be closer to the work for those ideas to actually emerge. Of course now I'm resisting the urge to just re-outline and rewrite the part I already have!
@jayeless It’s hard to resist that urge. I’m making notes in Scrivener if something comes to me, so I can revisit. I’m not convinced I’ll get to 50,000 just with this story, but I will get to 50,000.
@BenSouthwood Yeah, I've been trying to do similar. I also think there's nothing wrong with working on another story, if you have to, to reach the 50,000 – after all the idea is to use the momentum of the month to be super productive, and if you'd be more productive on a second story rather than your first, well, go for it :)