Week 0 here.

So as of today my word count is 15052 – which makes me exactly on track to finish NaNoWriMo – I am neither behind nor ahead of where my word count should be.

That being said, this is one of the first stories I have written where I am finding myself wanting to switch between narratives whenever I get stuck. This is fine and even encouraged during NaNo, but usually I prefer to finish the chapter I am on before starting another and that does not seem to be possible for me with this book. Does this mean that the book will still be unfinished at 50,000 words? Possibly but that’s why I spend December editing everything I’ve written in the previous month.

It may be that the best way for this book to be written is precisely like that, with the narrative switching back and forth between the past and the present as the mystery from the past will not be solved until almost 100 years later – the book involves a fire in 1911 the cause of which was never discovered – though I am also finding that the cause of the fire may not be the only mystery that needs solving in the book.

With NaNoWriMo I think it works best if you do not think of the book as your first draft but instead as your zero draft. That is the story is in there somewhere, now when you edit it you get to go in, find the story, fix the plot holes and make sure all your sentences are well written. This is a story that I am looking forward to editing in December and I don’t think the same way about all of the stories I have written for NaNo, but the editing process will be a lot easier if all of my chapters are completed first!