We are now ten days into the month of November meaning that by the end of the day I'll be a third of the way done with the novel that I'm writing for this year's NaNoWriMo. Though I am very excited about the progress that I am making, the fact that participating in this year's challenge was such a last moment plan is making this the sloppiest first draft that I've ever written.

Thankfully, this mess of a draft is by design due to the writing strategy that I shared in yesterday's post where each chapter is based on a specific topic that also drives the story. I'm not sure if I would use this technique to write a traditional book but it's working perfectly for this experiment especially when you factor in the added pressures of the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Normally when I write, I'm not that huge of a planner but, at least when it comes to fiction, I usually start with a general idea about the themes that I want to explore along with a jump of point and how I want to finish. I may also have a handful of scenes to give the story some direction but for the most part, I just let the characters lead the way while I simply transcribe their choices. 

When it comes to this current novel, I don't even have that loose of a plan as every day, I have absolutely no idea what I am going to say until my fingers start to dance across the key. Though challenging and fun I generally prefer to live somewhere in the middle and at least have some idea where I'm going. 

I've tried doing prep work in the past, creating outlines and all sort of supplemental documents but this rand of writing just isn't for me. That said, I did find this prep work to be very handy in school where it was very important to strictly stick to the three-act structure while following the formula of The Heroes Journey in order to learn how to produce recycled garbage that's also more likely to get made.

This structure-based writing always felt like Mad-Libs to me and though I can and have pulled this off when I needed to I'd rather give up than give in to the cookie cutter content that the people with the power actually want. I get it, these people what a return on their investment but sometimes I just feel that attitude is damaging when it comes to making it mandatory in art. 

With all of the above said, I do believe in structure but I also believe there should be more than one that's valid. I also believe that whatever structure one decides to go with shouldn't be treated like a golden rule to where anything you watch or read feels like it's a paint by numbers.

Hm, that turned into a bit of a rant out of nowhere. I was simply going to explain how I have mixed feelings about going as freeform as I have with this draft of my novel but just couldn't resist a quick sidebar to share my issues with being too dependent on structure and format while attempting to be original and creative.

Oh well, now that I've gotten it all off my mind it's time to move on to my next venture. With that, it's time to say my farewells with a warning that I'll be back tomorrow with another one of my Daily Breaker updates.

Talk to you then,

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. If you are reading this and playing along with this year's NaNoWriMo feel free to add fubunker as your writing buddy and I will buddy you back.