NaNoWriMo - an overview of November 2015

My last post here was just before I dived into NaNoWriMo which, along with moving house and leaving my job, took over my November. You may recall how excited I was to get started, to begin writing a story that had been bubbling away in the background for years and to revisit characters I loved and didn't want to lose. Well, that excitement produced a nice, fat 6,404 words on November 1st, a NaNoWriMo first day personal best. I stayed two or three days ahead of target for the first two weeks, which is just as well as the stress of moving plus a couple of unforeseen obstacles set me back. Towards the end of the month, two five-hour-long train journeys between Liverpool and Portsmouth got me back on track, and I finished nicely with just over 50,000 on November 30th.

But I'm not writing this post to talk about my word count, even if this has been the nicest, easiest Nano I've done so far (not to mention the quickest, where did that month go??). Instead, I'd like to talk about some of the things I've learnt through winning Nano a 4th time, and this time it's after I've successfully finished a first draft of an earlier work in progress and moved on to the editing process.

In the past, I always stuck to the traditional values of NaNoWriMo: write something, anything, lock away your inner editor, unleash your creativity, get those words out and onto the page. Most importantly, in fact, get those words out. Write your 50,000. It doesn't matter how you get there. While I agree that in some cases sticking to these values is enjoyable and surprising (you never know what your imagination is going to produce when working to such a tight deadline), thinking this way has also let me down in the past, or else left me with a mess I have to untangle. My first two Nano wins were useless, once I got passed the beginning I had planned and realised I didn't have a middle. While I agree that some of what I wrote is better than I expected, it doesn't always match the plot I planned, and I'm left with a story that has gone off on a tangent, down a road I didn't want it to walk down. My third Nano win was more successful, and this is the draft I went on to finish and subsequently revise. But even then, even though I stayed closer to the path, I had huge gaps and threads of story that I somehow had to bring together, and it took me two years on and off to finally turn it into something I was happy with.

So, when putting pen to paper for this year's novel (which, for those of you wondering, is a complete overhaul of my first attempt at Nano back in 2009), I knew I didn't want to mess it up. This novel has been a baby I want to bring up the right way, and after years of waiting and feeding it ideas bit by bit, I've finally had another shot at getting it right. I occasionally found myself forgetting the true goal of this novel and getting caught up in the Nano rush, and once or twice I fell into the trap of writing any old thing to achieve the word count, but I pulled myself up on it before it went too far. I let the inner editor out once, to cut 700 words (which I got told off for by a fellow Wrimo and vowed to use the "strikeout" feature from now on, as per her instruction), but my novel is better for it. And in the past my tactic had always been to skip ahead when I got bored or blocked with what I was writing, and while I agree that this is a good way to keep the writing going instead of getting stuck, I often made the mistake of skipping too far ahead and struggling to link the scenes together later on. I've learnt my lesson from that and made the gaps smaller this time around, writing as lineally as possible. But please don't avoid writing later scenes altogether. If you already have the climax or the ending unravelling in your head, or even a scene you just really want in your novel, make sure you write it down while it's fresh in your mind and use it as something to work towards. Just make sure it fits in nicely with the rest of your story during re-writes!

So at the end of this year's NaNoWriMo, I've really understood how to make Nano work for me. As I've always said, the programme is a great way to kickstart your novel, and it goes without saying that the atmosphere, the people you meet both online and in write ins, the tips and tricks and moral support are invaluable and make for a wonderful experience. But, if you know how you want your novel to go and intend to edit it later on (instead of just writing for enjoyment and creativity's sake like I know a lot of people do), make sure you remember what the end goal is. It's not too difficult to write 50,000 words of just anything. Keeping your novel on track and producing something you want to show the world is much harder.

So I hope you all had a good November, whether or not you joined in with NaNoWriMo. If you are a regular participant or you are thinking of joining in next year, I would love to buddy up with you and hear how you do. My account can be found here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/azureoblivion

All the best and happy holidays :)

Hampshire, UK, December 2015

Writing that breathes.

Any writers reading this may or may not have heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), when crazy people like myself embark on a mission to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. People have laughed and called me mad, but I assure you it's possible. I've done it three times and I am determined that this year I'll add another trophy to my fictional shelf. But I'm not here to talk about Nanowrimo, because you may already know what it is, and if you don't, I recommend you head over to nanowrimo.org to get the low down on this crazy yet exhilarating writing activity.

What I'm here to talk about is the character who will finally be getting her own novel this November.

Before I start, I have a couple of confessions to make. Confession number one, I used to be a regular online role player and fanfiction writer (don't ask to see my fanfiction, it's terrible). And secondly, the character I mentioned above was (you guessed it) originally a character created especially for a role play game. As embarrassing as I find it to admit to non-online friends that I used to role play, I've got to be honest, I wouldn't be the writer I am today without it. My first venture into RPing was full of Mary Sues, clichés and cheesy lines. But as I got older and more experienced, my writing improved. Most importantly, I stopped using RP as an opportunity to put myself into my favourite fictional worlds (that gets boring after a while) and started getting creative with characters.

The character in question had similar beginnings. She started off as a baddie, quite generic, a school bully, a spoilt brat. But eventually, I began to discover this character's reasons for being the way she was. Her dreams. Her fears. The things that make her tick. Suddenly, she went from being a generic baddie to a well-fleshed out character. So much so that she breathed on the page. She became so natural to write that she pretty much told ME what she would do in each situation, rather than it being the other way around.

After a while my RPing days began to look over, and I realised that I didn't want my best character to die with the site she had lived on for a number of years. So, six years ago, when I first heard about Nanowrimo, I tried to write her into her own novel. But the RP world was still too fresh, and much to my dismay, she fell flat and dull in the vague and pale world I tried to create just for her.

Six years on, now that the RP sites are well and truly buried, I've worked and reworked that world and the plots to go with it and I'm finally ready to try again. And believe me, I've never been so excited for Nanowrimo. I can't wait to write her and get to know her again. It will be like seeing an old friend after long years of separation.

So, as I wait impatiently for the 1st November, able to do everything except start writing, I'm talking about my novel and my character instead.

It's going to be a good November.

Happy noveling ;)

Norwich, UK, October 2015