Launch & NaNoWriMo update: 20K words in

Since my last post, the other two kids were banished from society for a day (Friday) with a dreaded tummy bug that they then shared with their father, who was out of action for longer than the three of them combined. (Thankfully he returned to 'normal' life today.) So, other than look after them (why is it the baby chooses these days to start waking at 5.30am?), I haven't done much, except to knuckle down on my NaNoWriMo novel and post copies of page seventeen. Oh, and host a launch.

The launch for page seventeen Issue 7 was last Saturday, and everything turned out fabulously well. It's the first time we've held the launch at Burrinja cafe, and going by feedback from attendees, it will not be the last. We might have to do something about ferrying people from the train station next year though.

We had fifteen contributors read, including three who'd travelled from interstate (SA, NSW & Qld), and Vicki Thornton did a fabulous job as MC. As always, it was wonderful to meet new supporters, although there is never enough time to chat to any for long enough. With seventeen new voices in this issue, you'd better brace yourselves to hear more from at least some of them in the not too distant future.

If you'd like to know a bit more, Alec Patric has posted some thoughts on the Overland blog as well as on his personal blog.

As for the novel, well, it's coming along. I need to get ahead this week, with the littlies in creche for a special all-week treat, and so far, so good. I broke the 20K mark last night and am now sitting just below 22K. I'm amazed at some of the things I've learnt about my writing process, and was impressd on Monday morning to get 1478 words down in a single hour (this is quite possibly the extent of my typing ability).

Today though, I have a new problem to overcome. Which, to be honest, I'm not all that sure how to go about solving. Yesterday there was a moment when I realised I didn't feel the same need to tell this story that has sat with me for the last however-many months/years. Quite a rude shock really, when the first time I ventured into the topic was in 2004.

Even before turning the laptop on this morning, I decided it didn't matter, that I would just keep going as planned, as that's what I signed up for. I want to come out of this knowing that I can do it. Not to mention that perhaps it's too soon to tell if I really have lost the drive to tell this story, or maybe yesterday just wasn't such a great day. Or that 20K words isn't quite enough to tell.

Then this morning, 1K words in, it seemed the story took a wrong turn about 5K words ago. I imagine this wouldn't be a problem any other time. I'd just ditch the 5K words and get on with it. But I'm reluctant to dump 5K words from my word count. I think I'll probably just ignore that part of the story and get on with it, leaving the words there. Kind of like an extended flashback (or something). And assume I'll know one way or another by 50K words whether this story has a life (hoping to hell I can at least trick myself into pretending it might until I get there).