Spotify shoved this song in my face today, and I am overflowing with the rightness of it for this point in my novel.
Because it’s November 29th. I have 47,550 words. And I am almost finished.
This novel has been in my brain for a while. I knew what I wanted – the theme, the aesthetic, the conceit – but not what the plot should be. I tried last year, and got it soooo wrong. I was writing another story entirely, and spent months trying to tell myself it would come right in the end. Of course it never did. It was the wrong story.
This is the right story. Yes, there are changes that need to be made, and I already have a list of “things to do in Draft 2”. The setting must be tweaked. One of the characters needs an almighty makeover. The “fun and games” part of the narrative needs to be changed significantly. And I need to make sure that all the elements that come to a head right here at the climax are threads that have been running throughout the whole story.
But I’m excited about it. About draft 2. I have a living, breathing hunk of clay in my hands that I can fashion into what it was always meant to be. I wouldn’t be able to mould it without first creating that hunk of clay, and that is the First Draft. It’s emotional, getting to the end. There was nothing here a month ago. Now it’s nearly done. NaNoWriMo is a wild ride in that sense. Before you know it, you have a novel.
The hunk of clay is almost finished and ready for reworking. 2,500 words? I can do that tonight. I’ve been running 2000-word days for a couple of weeks now, to make up a deficit I’d foolishly allowed to develop. I didn’t think I could keep up a 2,000-words-a-day schedule for that long. But I did. And I have a novel now.
The problems and anxieties have been resolved. The plot has come together. My main character is focused and she is ready and she is pointed at THE END.
Let’s do this.