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Sunday, April 6, 2014

Camp NaNoWriMo update: Revising and outlining

April is shaping up to be a fairly nontraditional NaNoWriMo for me, which is fine because it is Camp NaNoWriMo, after all.

Of the first five days of April, I worked on my novel for four, putting several hours of work into it each time.  I haven't actually written new material and tracked work count in typical NaNo style, though.  Instead, I've given myself 1,000 "words" every day I've worked on the novel.  If I'd spent as long writing as I did working on outlining, revising, and researching, I'd probably have far more than 4k on my word count right now, so I consider this fair.

Seeing as how my novel is part-retelling, part-sequel of the original Phantom of the Opera, my major task was figuring out a timeline for the events in Leroux's novel.  (Aeon Timeline has really come in handy there, by the way, since I was able to create separate arcs for my novel versus the original, with color coding and the ability to tag which characters were in which scenes.  This comes in handy during the more complicated scenes, when I have events taking place at the same time as those in the original novel, and I need to keep track of where all characters are at all times so that my novel meshes with the original.)

I spent the first few days going through the original novel and trying to figure out the passage of time, which is challenging to say the least, since Leroux clearly didn't consul a calendar when writing the novel.  In any case, I did finally work it out to my satisfaction, and I'm now filling in the events of my novel around those in the original.

As I skim back through what I wrote in November -- partly to fill in the timeline, and partly to refresh my memory -- I'm finding some things that need to be rewritten.  You see, partway through the month I changed my mind about an important plot point, and I knew many of the earlier scenes would need to be revised to reflect the changes.  I am finding, however, that the impact of that change is more extensive than I had anticipated, and so I am making changes as I go along, in addition to filling in the timeline.

I probably am selling myself short by only giving myself 1k per day for this work, since I've spent quite a lot of time on it so far.  Assigning a word count per hour would probably be more appropriate.  However, 1k was my daily word count goal going into the month, so it seemed like an appropriate number to reflect that I had worked on my novel, even if not in the traditional NaNoWriMo way.

Hopefully now that I am on the original novel, I will get through it quickly, and be able to start producing new scenes.  I do want to finish the novel during April, so that I can return to Ruby Ransome in May!

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