NaNoWriMo Update: Week One
Word Count: 17,007
Pages: 72
New President-elect and Vice President-elect: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (!!!)
Photo by Jubal Kenneth Bernal from Unsplash
“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
What a week! What an exhausting, utterly horribly but ultimately wonderful week! Yesterday, while watching Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announce that they have won the U.S. presidential election, I couldn’t help but collapse in tears. To see VP-elect Harris on stage, a woman of color, in the second highest seat of power in the United States government was truly an emotional moment, and one long overdue. So thank you to all those who went out and voted, and I hope we can learn to unite despite the division, with the other half of the country who voted for Trump. As I have noted in past posts, though, there are political positions and there is supporting policies that actively attempt to undermine the rights of minorities and vulnerable communities. We must learn to tell the difference.
Now that my political point is out of the way, this has been an exciting week for my novel as well! Last week, I was a measly 2,000 words in, and now, in one week, I’ve somehow written about 15,000 words and 60-some pages. Wild.
Photo by Yannick Pulver from Unsplash
It’s been frustrating, though, and an exercise in realizing that the back-breaking month I spent planning may ultimately have to be thrown to wind for sudden inspiration. That’s cool. Totally fine. Not frustrated at all.
Things I learned this week:
I’m not super funny in writing lmao
My phone is my greatest enemy
Dialogue is a lot harder than I thought
Here’s a little snippet:
To have a mixed race child is a responsibility I’m not sure any parent is prepared for. They’re not prepared for the questions or the stares. They’re less prepared for the confusion the child holds in their mouth, the weightiness that comes from not knowing all the answers.
This wore away quickly at my dad. He, who grew up in California to an alcoholic father and a quiet mother; he, who grew up in a predominantly Asian community, was not prepared for the solitude that came with white middle class America.
The erosion was less rapid for my mother. A mother’s love prevents a lot of things - hate for your child or resentment. It is always forgiveness, again and again.
Just tryna to keep it vague, but part of my goal was to write about mixed race characters without their race being the main talking point of the book. I feel like, in reading, white main characters are the main characters without commentary, but when the main character is a person of color or someone mixed, their race is always a focal point. Part of my goal was to write about mixed main characters as people who exist, and that is that. But I did want to include some of the nuance of it, as well.
Anyway! Goals for next week:
Keep at the same pace! So, a word count of at least 25 but hopefully closer to 30k
Add more detail - I feel like a lot of my writing has been focusing on advancing the plot, without adding much of the needed commentary/inner thoughts of my characters
Drink less coffee. Fr fr
Click this link to follow me on NaNoWriMo’s official website or if you’re especially impatient and want constant updates. Until next week!
