Things are not going well.
Quota notwithstanding (I'm still less than halfway to where I should be tonight), after writing part of Chapter Eight last night and starting to stumble (again) over the underlying, and supposedly revealed-in-small-doses historical timeline I'd envisioned for the story, I realized that I needed to write down the timeline with actual dates in order to keep things straight.
Then I decided, rather than doing the revealed-in-small-doses thing — which forces me to stop every half chapter or so to verify that something still fits and which I suspect is somewhat frustrating to readers as well — I might as well sit down and flat out write out the timeline as its own chapter.
So I scrapped Cameron's trip back to the office, and replaced it with a history lesson. A sudden chunk of information eight chapters in that helps fills in what few clues were dropped in preceding chapters but will more importantly make subsequent chapters easier to follow.
I finished the timeline, but not the chapter based on it, because the section I'm still working on is specific to Hawaii between the years 2067 and the setting of the novel - details that I have to get right now, or I won't be able to go back and fix without making a huge mess later.
So another less-than-quota day, in a series of less-than-quota days. I don't think I'll be a certified NaNoWriMo winner. The question I'm facing now is: should I plod on and finish this story, eventually, anyway?
I'm enjoying it, even if no one else is. (He said, looking woefully at his wife.)
Posted by Ryan at November 14, 2002 1:18 AM