frea_o | Nanowrimo Day 15

For ten very scary minutes last night, I convinced myself that I had added ten chapters to my Secret Santa project. I’ve described the plot to a few family members and close friends, which leads to the following hilarious interplay:

me: *twenty minutes of characters, consequences, battles, limb amputation, being rescued, etc*
close friend: That sounds like a great plot, Frea!
me: That’s the backstory.
close friend: What?
me: The real story begins five years later…

Yes. My backstory makes for its own complete fanfic that would be pretty fascinating. The problem is that the backstory is definitely not Clint/Natasha and I’m writing it for

be_compromised. Shipping is kind of a prerequisite, which means that for this exchange I need to tell what could be argued is the second story in a series.

And here’s where my issue is: for the second story, one of the two (I won’t say which) is kind of out of commission. Just the nature of the story, I fear. So to make a fair and balanced story with dual perspectives, I figured out I could tell the story from five years before from that characters’ perspective. It has the added benefit of mystery showing where the characters were five years ago and how they arrived where they are at the current point in the story.

The drawback, though, is that it adds ten chapters to what’s already an embarrassingly long saga. Like, I know it’s wonderful to give somebody a long story and I’m hoping my recipient really enjoys it, but the fact that this is ten chapters long already and going to be at least 25k when the minimum is 1k makes me feel self-conscious.

Thankfully, I managed to tweak it to where I let the focal character tell the second story a little bit, but worked it around to the plot. I’ll do this at a couple of other points in the story so that this character isn’t forgotten (though other character thinks about him/her so much you won’t forget).

In Nanowrimo generalities, I managed to catch up to the word count before I fell asleep last night and I’ve already written the day’s word count, which is good because tonight I will be making a pie and a pie crust and

sabra_n has managed to terrify me about how freaking scary baking is.

I must remember to back up my Nanowrimo projects on the cloud before I attempt baking things, as the apartment going up in smoke would be a real bummer.

- Frea

Word Count: 25,530 words
Current Project: Secret Santa Chapter 4
Project on Deck: Greater 11