NaNoWriMo Day 4

Today's word count ended at 8699 so I am so far on track. My goal is to write around 2000 words a day, give or take. I've outlined my book down to a prologue, epilogue, and nineteen chapters. I usually do very little outlining and this is a very basic outline. I just wanted to get my basic points down for each chapter so that if I felt the urge to jump around and write different chapters at different times, I could. I almost never write linearly mostly because I get bored at some point and move around all over the place.

That's what I ended up doing today. Chapter 10 is mostly complete and then, this evening, I went back and did some work in Chapter 2 and 3. It's nice to have the freedom to move around freely and write whatever chapters seem the most interesting to me that day. So far, this story is getting interesting to me. It has already morphed a few times and I can already feel a change coming on again. I knew I was going to place the main character in a family but I did not realize that the  main character's older brother is a bit of a prick. That kind of came out of left field but I'm glad it did. It makes things much more interesting.

And for those of you with any interest, a short section:

Behind him, he left only a family: a mother who no longer cared, a father who was never home, and a brother who worried very little about anything beyond his own needs. His friends were few and far between and all of them would move on quickly enough. He’d always been the loner, the one who seemed a little strange to the rest of his species. He had been known as a thinker, a philosopher when all they needed were pilots or soldiers or leaders. But he didn’t want to lead anyone. He wanted, more than anything, to discover, to work alongside those that might otherwise be an unknown.

This would be his biggest adventure. Would he die out there, among the stars? Would his ship be attacked before he even reached his first destination? He wouldn’t know until he got there. He couldn’t tell the future and he had never believed in divine purpose like most of his species. The life he led would be under his own control. He would live and die by his own decisions with no one else alongside to worry about. The responsibility of ruling his own destiny and making his own grave gave him an odd thrill, both terrifying and wonderful all in the same mouthful.

But he drank up that sensation, storing it for darker times when he knew he would question his own decision. After all, he had been raised to believe that his only purpose in life was to follow orders, listen to the decisions of his elders, and do what must be done to keep his species alive.