That character I introduced in Chapter 1 with the interesting speech patterns suddenly seems unnecessary. That’s just one of the vexing aspects of this uncontrollable draft that I’m writing faster than my brain prefers.
Characters disappearing happens. Sometimes they change personalities, too. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does. The difference is I don’t have time to make all the necessary changes in my mind with the word quota oppressing me every day. Ordinarily, I would notice my fading character and retrace my steps, at least mentally, before moving ahead. Did I write him into a corner, or is he truly not important to the story as it is developing?
I feel like I don’t have time to think about it. I have to charge forward, regardless, and clean up the mess later.
On the bright side, I’m relatively sure at this point that taking part in NaNoWriMo has been a good challenge for my creativity. Because I have to keep typing, thoughts that ordinarily wouldn’t get much airplay are becoming full scenes. (Will they be cut in draft two? Possibly.) But I’ve never been the type of writer to view poor writing as a waste of time–it gets filed in my “crap” folder, and occasionally revisited in the hope of reviving some half-baked ideas.
If nothing else, I’ll have 50,000 words that can be potentially fully baked later. Only time will tell.
