NaNo: Slightly Scared (Staring At My Laptop)

A strange title for a post perhaps, but I've managed to postpone (a nicer word than procrastinate) looking at my NaNo efforts for at least a week now. I even happily sat down to do my income taxes first. Priorities and all that. The real truth is: I'm a little bit scared.

The thing is, apart from picking up the wonderful book I truly am reading, there's no reason for me not to open my small laptop and go over my "book" (quotation marks fully intentional). And yet, every time I think of actually doing just that, I feel a fluttering of butterflies in my stomach and my mind produces some other odd job I could also take care of first. What's up with that?

For some reason I feel anxious to open that particular document with the intention of rereading the entire text and making notes to improve it. I might even skip the notes part, dive right in and use delete and backspace more than I should. Or not. I might like what I came up with and just feel the need to add some things here and there. Yeah, right.

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NaNo: Three Months Later

Image: burke.ces.ncsu.edu

The end of February is near and that makes it three months after I've typed the final few words of my NaNo project. I haven't looked at it since. Not because I didn't want to, but because I've been busy with three translations. And because I figured it might be a good idea to let the story rest. Completely.

By now I'm running out of excuses not to pick up my computer and settle down on the couch with my NaNo story. I already know a few things that I want to or should change - the only question being: how? What can I do to change the story to make it more exciting, give it more suspense and a better build-up to the final showdown (which also needs work), without rewriting the entire thing?

I've promised myself that I would open up my document and save it as a second file before making changes. It doesn't matter if I end up with twenty drafts (they're easily sortable by date anyway), but I don't want to cut, delete or lose anything I might regret later.

Another promise I've made is that I should remember that this version is a bare bones version of the story. It's the result of writing for three weeks straight, pouring out at least a general structure and a plot from beginning to end, no holding back. I am not allowed to rewrite the entire thing or delete it and start again.

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