exploratory noveling

It makes me very sad that the NaNoWriMo word count widgets aren’t working yet. So when I say, “I have 17,507 words!” that doesn’t get translated into a pretty little progress bar.

I Googled and I found one! Not the fancypants official ones, but still a visual interpretation of numbers and that makes me inexplicably happy:

17507 / 50000 words. 35% done!

I’m much further ahead than I’d expected to be. I might try to hit 25k sometime over the weekend if I’m feeling particularly motivated. It’s going well but I’m not sure what I think of it yet. But my characters are putting up with a fair amount of pushing them around, and they have a destination that I likely won’t reach for another 10k, and I have a general idea of what might happen after that.

I have more of an outline this year than usual, mostly because I’m structuring it on classic Hero’s Journey framework, so it has a general sort of shape to it. It’s building toward something, there’s all the fun traveling bits and stuff to encounter around the way.

It is sort of a fairy tale mashup, with my main characters taken from fairy tales and pushed far beyond their happy ever afters. So far I’ve pulled from Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Six Swans. I’m likely using Bluebeard at some point.

It’s almost as though I have a map this year, only it’s written in fading ink and has bits missing, and I keep wandering toward those bits that say hic sunt dracones. Still exploratory, still not sure what I might find, but I have a decent idea of where I’m headed.

Unless of course I get attacked by pirates or something. Which has been known to happen.