A week ago, I joined thousands of other amateurs in writing one novel in one month. This is part of National Novel Writing Month, with the challenge being to write a 50,000-word work of fiction starting November 1st and finishing by the end of November 30th.

In some ways, it’s been a breeze. I chose a simple concept that I’m tremendously comfortable with, a knight-in-shining-armor version of my son that I use as a bedtime story. As a long-time D&D player and DM, and a part-time fan of fantasy fiction like the Shannara series, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Conan, and a variety of lesser series and one-shots, I have a pretty broad set of plot hooks at my disposal to send my brave knight off on a variety of adventures.

The main problem so far has been structure and pacing. For the first sub-arc of the story, I just wasn’t sure when to make my transitions. Had the social obstacle in the village posed enough of a challenge? Had the protagonist spent enough time and effort on overcoming it? Too much? If too much, am I really going to go back and tighten it up now, what with the 1,667/words-per-day pace necessary to complete the challenge? Should I spend a couple of pages on building up a little sympathy for the bad-guy, or leave this one cut and dry? Had I sprinkled clichés on liberally enough to suit the simple, light-hearten tone I’m shooting for?

So far, so good, I suppose. I certainly have no intention at this point of showing my work to anybody before at least a first-pass edit. I’m taking the advice of veteran NaNoWriMo participants and resisting the urge to double-back and edit. November is for writing.