Day 3 of NaNoWriMo: in which motivation returns and a darkness occurs

So after the flop was day 2, I was determined hit day 3 full on and win, win, WIN! And boy did I do that. 1,799 words in one hour. That was enough to push me back up above the daily average of 1,667 required to write 50,000 words in a month. AWESOME! Yay, me!

But now I've given myself a bit of a problem. My project started out as a nice, Middle Grade Science Fiction story with throwbacks to a few of my favourite books of all time (no spoilers!). Seemed like a great idea at the time and it had the potential to really kick ass. Then I wrote a chapter tonight that has flipped this novel on its head.

I wrote one those chapters. The kind of chapters that makes you think, 'did I just come up with that?' It was seriously dark, surprisingly disturbing and I think if it happened in real life would ultimately cause me to lose all faith in humanity.

But it resonates with the world today in a way that is equally disturbing, so it has to stay in there! And it works. It just does. So the conundrum: do I push the novel up into Young Adult to make the subject a bit more reasonable, or do I risk pushing the boundaries at Middle Grade and hope that the dark side works and is accepted in the context in which is written.

It has definitely moved the book on to a new phase and absolutely demolishes the crappy chapter that I chopped out yesterday in a vent of tired frustration. I guess we see what tomorrow brings!

Happy writing out there to all you NaNoWriMo'ers!