Hello, dreamers. National Novel Writing Month is now well underway. I’ve made significant headway over the past week, but the hardest part of these early chapters is yet to come. I’ll begin the coming week by working on my first major action sequence, which will span between two and three chapters. That said, here’s where things stand so far:

Week 1 of OctoWIP

So far, I’ve written a little over 16,000 words on this story. That includes another page of repitends, but does not include the work I’ve done on the current chapter so far, as I don’t count words until they’re added to the master file.

To be fair, work this past week was slow. The early chapters of any novel are, by necessity, devoted largely to character building. There’s a lot of digging into characters’ emotional states and interiority, while building the plot mostly happens in the background. However, I’m happy with what I’ve got so far. I’ve managed to establish the characters of Karen Hernandez and Anita Powell, while managing to introduce tension early on.

Of course, these early chapters have been building to the first action sequence. In the coming chapters, a routine repair job on the exterior of the Challenger will go horribly wrong. My characters will be tested, both POV characters will be given a chance to shine, and ultimately the crew will have to deal with their first death.

My slow progress thus far is owed partially to my continued struggle to find a rhythm with this project. This is the first novel I’ve attempted since developing my new, voicier writing style (Seven Days on Samarkand was not originally written in this style). My original idea of writing passages from Anita’s POV in the morning and Karen’s in the evening has proven problematic; my POV changes are not static from chapter to chapter, and if I stuck to the original regimen, it would require me to write out of chronological order. I’d potentially be writing scenes from one POV before scenes from the other POV occur, opening myself up to continuity errors.

The result has been a frustrating game of “two steps forward, one step back”, as I find myself constantly going back and changing earlier passages to conform with what I’m writing. I’m starting to feel that this current regimen is unsustainable in the long run. At present, I’m toying around with the idea of changing the format: writing shorter chapters, so that each chapter is taken from only one POV. However, that could cause problems with the chapters ahead.

As I frequently remind my readers and myself, writing is not an exact science. There’s a lot of trial and error involved. I’ve already attempted this novel twice before, and in both cases I put it aside because I ran into these kinds of problems. But this time I am committed to forging ahead. This story deserves to be told, and only I can tell it. At the moment, I’m comfortable putting off any sweeping changes to the format until I see how the coming chapters go.

For now, my focus is the upcoming action sequence. I expect writing that to take most of the next several days. After that, I plan to jump ahead in time by several weeks. The subsequent chapters will see the crew learning more about the ocean moon they’ve come to study, while the two POV characters will be split up as Anita is charged with an audacious repair mission to a defunct robotic probe. It should be a fun week, dreamers. More to come on Wednesday. Until then, as always, dare to dream. – MK