The Problem with Pantsing NaNo #amwriting

NaNo is the short name for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It takes place in November, and the goal is to write 50K in 30 days.

Three NaNos ago, I won. I’m paying the price for that now.

Oh, it’s not an issue with the quality of my work. No, I actually still enjoy what I wrote. But I wrote it all in one POV with the expectation of integrating it in with the other POVs at a later date. Here we are at that later date, and I’ve had to completely chop up my timeline. I’ve come to realize most of what I wrote that NaNo won’t survive, simply due to timeline changes. I even combined another two chapters this past week. I think I would’ve been fine if it was a single POV book, but since I didn’t have a clear idea of where the other characters were going three years ago, I’m facing the changes now. But it’ll be better! Really, it will.

I’m currently on what will likely be chapter 17 (assuming I don’t rearrange everything again). My current plan has me at 60 chapters. Of those 60, 36 won’t be impacted by my timeline changes. Not too terrible. I might not have reached halfway chronologically yet (3 1/2 chapters to go), but hey, half of the writing is done!

Have you ever had to completely toss out a novel’s worth of words? Do you work with multiple POVs? Do you have a habit of rearranging chapters?

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