Year of Words: March — Best Laid Plans

On the one hand, March has been a colossal failure. All I’ve produced are 4 very poor chapters which need completely replanning, restructuring, and rewriting. On the numbers front, I’ve written just shy of 7,500 words — a significant portion less than January or February — and broke the 200 word mark less than half of the days. My yearly total now stands at 26,988 words, far behind what I’d hoped and expected of myself. But I’ve also come to some important realisations about Project Pine that I couldn’t have learned without just giving things a try and seeing it through to the end.

Yesterday I finished the final chapter of Part I of Pine, which was a long while after I came to the conclusion that it shouldn’t have been where I started. In short, I’d completely underestimated how pivotal this opening section is in establishing the core of the story, the world, and the protagonist. Part I spans over a decade of the main character’s formative years, which in itself is tough to execute. But I’ve also discovered it’s incredibly difficult at this early stage to know what foundations he will need to have had: his friends, his memories, his milestones, the beliefs of his guardians, the values of his community. I’d meticulously planned out a plot, a series of events that leads to a story, but not the things that I now see will actually matter to him, rather than to me. In shorter terms, I don’t know what will be important about my protagonist’s past until he’s in his future. It all sounds a bit backwards. I’m still wracking my head around it.

I’d also originally held the goal that the only words I could write were ‘Real Words’, working towards the current project. But after completely losing motivation and momentum midway through the month, I took a few days to instead work on some world-building, building upon my ever-growing archive of lore. There ended up being more than a few things that I didn’t think would be relevant to this novel until I was staring at it on the page. All in all, It’s been a real test of perseverance and adaptability. I think — I hope — the book will be better for it. That I will be better for trying, for failing, for keeping going.

Regardless, today marks Day 90 of my daily writing streak, still going strong. We’re a quarter of the way there. Part I is drafted. I’m on the precipice of two weeks of spring break freedom. Tomorrow I’ll be beginning Part II, with a new POV character, a new voice, a new setting. A fresh start.

See you in April, and fare well, wherever you fare,

— H