Char Mesan Writes

Nanowrimo: Day 19 update

I have made NO progress with my manuscript word count over the last three or four days.

I have, however, still been 'working' on my storyline.  I mentioned in a previous post that I don't have drawing skills (and I still don't) but I am a visual person, so in order to cement my storyline in my mind, I made a collage of my storyline from pictures I found on the internet - some photographs, some artists drawings or paintings, clip art. Anything that was suitable to help me create a sort of 'storyboard' that I can reference when I need to.

I went through two glue sticks and a quarter of a ream of paper printing out various size images and pasting them into some sort of order; yet I don't think anyone would be able to flip through the visual art diary and work out my storyline because some of the images I included were things like just eyes (because that is the shape I imagine my heroine has), or something that is just meaningful to me about a character or setting, or moment.

And today, I drew a map of my world - something a lot of fantasy writers do.  I didn't create a map of the whole world, only the part relevant to the beginning of the story which I am still currently writing - if I know whereabouts roughly on the map my heroine lives, and I already know how long it takes her to travel to the 'heart of the city', then I'll be able to visualise and accurately describe length of travel later on within the story.

Another thing I did is, because I started writing the story a few years ago and it has undergone quite a few changes since as I've 'tightened up' my ideas or changed my mind about its progress, was to print out a copy of old story notes so I can go through and work out what is still 'rescueable' and what isn't in regards to manuscript, rules, plot points, characters etc.

I'm feeling really pleased with my progress even though I haven't succeeded in writing every single day... my novel IS making progress even though the last few days the word count has remained stable.