When NaNoWriMo Strikes...

I HAVE TWO HOURS AND NINE MINUTES UNTIL NANOWRIMO 2012 STARTS!

Soooo I won both June and August camps! Yaaaaaay!

June Camp:

I worked on a story that I have been thinking of since what feels like forever now. The earliest rendition of the characters I thought up when I was about 9 or 10 maybe? Back then all it was was just a weird fangirl mix of Star Wars and X-Men for an OC character, but slowly that character grew, and more characters joined, and a sort-of-plot emerged from the rubble of my primary school writer days. Looking back, I think the first time I seriously started working on these characters of mine was when I was about 13 or 14. I remember playing around with names a lot. And Charlie soon became Roxie, and ‘The Professor’ became Charlie, who was now not-a-professor because really I had to let that cliched 10 year old idea of who this guy was go. I have a whole folder for old notes I used to write on these characters from my cute little attempts in early high school at trying to form some sort of practical writing structure and process. I have old character sheets galore, and a hand written 10 page opening chapter that is so awkward it makes me cringe every time. When I was about 15, I got my first computer that I had all to myself, and so I started to type up some sort of vague plot looking thing, which, although I have now lost, led the way for the plot I worked on for June.

The point here is, this year I finally did what I have been wanting to do since I was 9 or 10. Over the years ago. I took my beloved cast of characters and I sat down and wrote 65501 words on them. And it was the most awesome feeling ever. I may have gaping plot holes, and this awesome experience may have given me waaaay too many extra ideas to incorporate for me to handle, but for the first time I had a sizeable chunk of almost-novel to work with. And finally doing that was the best feeling of both relief and stress. Relief because now finally I have something compiled all neatly together and not just in my head. Stress because, well, it’s editing time!

August Camp:

And August was sort of editing time :D

With my purchase of Scrivener in July, that turned my camp nano free month into Edit Month. But when it came time for August, I just didn’t want to stop editing! And so I worked around it. 25k for August camp was further original writing for the June plot I worked on, and then the last 25k for the campnano 50k was editing of my June document. I almost didn’t get to 50k, but I did eventually. And yes, I rebelled from your typical nano experience, but whatever. Not only did I get further in my novel plot, I also completed a crap load of much needed revising and editing.

Go me!

dunham-anna:

Day 1 - Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before?  If so, which years and what end result?  If not (or even if so, for that matter), what’s your connection to writing?  Why do you want to participate this year?

Day 2 - What’s the title of your story?  Why did you choose the name you did?

Day 3 - Pick one of your female characters.  Introduce your readers to her, from her point of view and her words only.

Day 4 - What genre is your novel?  Why did you pick it?

Day 5 - Name two songs from your playlist that you feel are connected with your novel in some way, and explain how they are.

Day 6 - What is your one biggest stressor related to forcing yourself to write at least 50,000 words in a span of 30 days?

Day 7 - Where’s your favorite place to hunker down and write?

Day 8 -List your current, most up-to-date word count.  Are you satisfied with your progress thus far?

Day 9 - Have you told anyone else you’re doing NaNo this year?  Who?  What was their reaction?

Day 10 - How does your love of writing manifest in non-NaNo months?

Day 11 - Ever tried collaborative writing (such as play-by-post roleplaying)?  If so, what do you think of it?

Day 12 - Imagine you’re behind in your word count goals (even if you’re not) and are going to pull an all-nighter to catch up.  Screencap a playlist of inspirational music you would use to get you up to speed.

Day 13 - Name a male character from your novel.  Describe him through the point of view and words of the female character you introduced in question 3 (if they never interact, pick another female character).

Day 14 - Is the sexuality of your characters a large part of your novel’s story?  If so, are there characters who deviate from the heterosexual “norm”?  In what way?

Day 15 - Do any of your characters have a disability or mental illness?  If so, how does that affect their development throughout your story?

Day 16 - At around the half-way point, it bears mentioning that most of us wrimos have other obligations beside simply hitting that elusive word count.  What else do you have going on in your life (work, school, children, neurotic pets, etc.), and just how much are you shafting it to win NaNo?

Day 17 - In what time period is your novel set?  Is it in this world or another?

Day 18 - Who is the antagonist in your novel?  What drives their actions?

Day 19 - Which authors or books have inspired your own writing the most, and why?

Day 20 - If you could meet one fictional character from any book you’ve ever read, who would it be, and why?

Day 21 - With about 10 days left to this arguably traumatic experience, what are your plans and goals for your novel, should you successfully complete it?

Day 22 - If you’ve participated in or won NaNo before, what happened to your other novel efforts?  Still in the revision process/querying publishers/scrapped it immediately/etc.

Day 23 - Do animals play any part in your story?  If so, how do they add to it?

Day 24 - Is religion featured in your novel at all?  If so, which ones?  If it’s/they’re your own creations, describe it/them and how it/they play(s) a part in your characters’ lives.

Day 25 - What are the names of at least two of your main characters?  How did you choose their names?

Day 26 - Was any research involved (historical or otherwise) in your NaNo prep? 

Day 27 - What’s your word count now?  Are you satisfied with your progress or panicked that you won’t have enough time to finish by November 30?

Day 28 - Name one thing you shafted all month in favor of participating in NaNo.

Day 29 - Name one thing in which you indulged as a treat to keep yourself motivated and writing that you wouldn’t otherwise have done.

Day 30 - Share a link to either your NaNo profile or a location on the internet where your story can be found.  If someone offered to beta read for you, would you be willing to do the same for them during the subsequent editing process?

(This was created by someone whose screenname on tumblr is ‘matokah’.)

(Source: nanowrimo.org)

I AM NOT PREPARED

I am more prepared than last year, but still,

BRING ON JUNE!

For Script Frenzy this year I’m writing a screenplay focusing on the character development of one of the main characters in my nanowrimo novel for November this year. It’s just for silly fun, so basically it isn’t going to make sense and will probably get quite crazy by the end. 

In the story of the MC that I will be writing for nano this year, somewhere towards the end she gets knocked unconscious and doesn’t wake up for a few weeks. The story then shifts to her brothers instead of her, and blah blah blah, and she eventually wakes up and doesn’t remember anything that happened to her whilst she was ‘asleep’, though she feels changed and different, as if she had gone through some amazing, enlightening and life changing experience. She can’t remember a darn thing, but she knew that she had an awesome time.

And so, my screenplay will be based around what she experiences during this period when she is basically in a coma/eternal sleep like state. 

And it will be basically her having adventures with the fandoms I like, befriending other characters and trying to find a way out of her dream. Kind of like Wizard Of Oz meets every single darn fandom I’m obsessed with. 

Well… this is going to be a fun month. 

Bring it on.

But I had a good run of it. The reason I didn’t finish was mostly due to a 10 hour plane trip and bad hotel internet reception and a dead laptop battery, but I shall take losing like a champion and go ahead and edit my almost 50000 words anyway….

Ten Things I Have Learnt From This Years NaNo Attempt:

1. A novel doesn’t write itself
2. I realised at the end of November that the way I was pronouncing my main character’s name was in no way working with the way it was spelt. I had spelt my MC’s name wrong for over 47000 words. Oops.
3. Planning helps… to an extent. My story focuses around 6 different nations and their ruling families. I had characterised and planned one family very thoroughly, but the others not so much, so it made it really easy in the beginning to get my word count up but when it came to later on when more characters were introduced, it became very slow and sometimes I spent 3 days without writing a word. Ugh. I had an overall plot outline which changed and developed as I wrote, but an outline really helped me because at least I had some sort of direction going with the story, not just random stuff happening all the time.
4. Characters will do what they like sometimes. For example, I had one character randomly back another character into a dark corner where they kissed and then later she slapped him in the face, but I had never planned on these characters speaking to each other until about 30000 words in and this little character rebellion happened before 10k. Oh god. And then it led to romantic tension, and just, no.
5. Caffeine is a gift from the nano gods.
6. Sleep and nano do not mix.
7. Randomly killing people off may be fun, but it’s always annoying when you suddenly realise that character who just got shot by his brother actually was needed a few chapters down the line. Darn.
8. Pirate ships are a must.
9. Editing will be a long process. But i can’t wait to read my almost 50k novel and see what awesome and weird and terrible and strange stuff I came up with.
10. The nanowrimo event is one of the most challenging and stressful things I do each year, but if i finish or not, it is still the most amazing thing to attempt and accomplish.

I’m going overseas on the 27th and I may not have internet or time to write when i’m there so I basically have to get this shit down in 2 days. About 13k left. I’ll get it done… but it doesn’t mean I want to do it. :)

Fuck.

I’m almost at 25k now. I would have reached it sooner but I went through like a 3 day phase where I just could bring myself to write.

And now I have a random urge to just throw in owls as an important plot component in my story. In the next thousand or two words I am introducing the small mining community in my story which will bring in my two favourite characters, Brielle and Braxton. And now they are going to have pet owls. And they also have twin psychic abilities and I think they should use the owls as like, tethers to each other. I don’t even know anymore. I JUST WANT OWLS, OKAY?!!?!