My latest novel manuscript is off to a flying start
thanks to National Novel Writing Month. I am 50,963 words in, about halfway
through. Really enjoying the story I am writing, although my characters are
not. The five of them are in a precarious situation with absolutely no idea
what is going on. They have theories, but none of them is close. I am looking
forward to springing the big revelation on them.
This was the third time I have done NaNoWriMo, and it was
the hardest. There was no novelty thrill. This time I did not reach the 50,000
words until the final day. My long-term illness was up and about for just about
the whole month, and the medication I take for it really tires me. The illness
also made it uncomfortable to sit for extended periods. I wrote in blocks of
300-500 words and then had a break and did something else for half an hour or
so. I wrote well into the evening on most days to pass the daily average of
1667 words.
I did this NaNoWriMo primarily to increase my output and
dedication to writing. This it has done. I now spend a lot more time thinking
about my writing, often stopping what I am doing to write down notes. This
morning I even thought up some ideas while swimming that I had to remember until
I finally finished my laps, so I could write them down. I, up until this
morning, had been very good at avoiding thinking about writing while swimming
for fear of forgetting killer ideas by the time I had finished.
It will be interesting to see how much I write this
month. I have a new article for Divine to write this week which requires a lot
of research, and I now have nearly three months of newspapers stacked up to
read. Lots of ideas for Divine articles come out of the newspapers, and I
believe it is a duty of writers to keep themselves informed, so there is no way
I am throwing them out until they have been thoroughly scoured. But while
catching up on reading them and writing more articles for Divine, I hope to
write at least 15,000 words of my novel this month.
3 comments:
Congratulations! I'm always impressed when anybody makes the NaNoWriMo target - especially since it's something I know I could never do.
Good luck with the rest of the book.
Ditto with graywave. It's very hard work.
Awesome achievement, especially when you had some tired days.
I hope it turns out the way you want in the end. Hopefully Ill see it in print form some day soon.
Thanks Graham and Anthony. I was just looking at all the freebees and discounts for nanowinners. They seem to want me to self-publish.
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