Well I started. Finally.
What, you ask, am I talking about? I am of course referring to National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo and after spending the first three days sat on my arse doing very little save wiping my leaking nose along with a fair bit of feeling sorry for myself I have finally begun work.
I began with the bold, and some would stay stupid, decision to shelve my original idea for NaNoWriMo on the grounds that involved a fair bit of historical research that I had failed to do in October, work getting in the way. It’s still a good idea but a bad first draft can kill an idea for me and so I’m penciling that in for early next year.
I then needed another idea, one that in essence I could run with on a minimum of research and that led me inexorably back to a project I abandoned some time ago. I have two novel ideas that have never really made it beyond the scraps of a legal pad, one from when I was fifteen and the other from when I first moved back to London. My NaNoWriMo project is the latter and carries (at present it may well change) the title Legend of the Slayer. And no before you ask it has nothing to do with Buffy, there is not a vampire in sight.
Anyway today has been spent on the story design, world creation and sketching out the character notes. A quicker process than normal as in essence that was as far as I got last time before I let myself get disheartened by discovering a similar conceit in a then newly released novel. I’ve come up with a new conceit that is different enough to distinguish my novel from this other work without destroying my original idea.
I may be slow out of the gates but in my defence I do have my main holiday coming up including a thirteen hour flight each way and a couple of days with nothing to do while G finishes off her business trip. I think at the moment I’ll be OK. Although I’d be lying if I wasn’t looking on other participants such as Strugglingwriter with awe and a vague sense that I am far too skilled in the art of procrastination.
You can check out my blurb for Legend of the Slayer here. I’m off now to have some dinner before returning to work. Ta Ta for now.
********
Actually my dinner was ready before I could post this and frankly it was bangers’n’mash cooked by my own fair hand. Basically I couldn’t wait. Bangers’n’mash are the best.
MMMMmmmm.
Neil, I’m quite the procrastinator as well. I’m flattered you would mention me as someone you look to in awe. The only thing keeping me going this year is that I know a bunch of people are watching me, and I don’t want them to see me fall.
I have a long way to go, though. I’m only at 6,000 words. My best ever year was last year, when I wound up with 14,000 words. I’ll be impressed with my self when I hit 30,000.
Anyhow, you’ll probably pass me in no time. Good luck!
Yes there’s nothing like peeled eyes to spur you on. I’m on my first time doing NaNoWriMo. I’ve done two novel length pieces in the past but neither of them have come in under eight weeks. Only one of them was any good.
I think the first 10k are going to be the hardest for me. Generally speaking I either know where I’m going by that point (good) or I don’t (bad almost doomed).
Good luck, Neil!
I’ve just broken 5k, and am really enjoying it.
Good luck to you to Justin. Glad you’re enjoying it.
This might help you get you word count up faster: Here’s what I try to do… I don’t always stick to this schedual, but of the scheduals I’ve tried, this is the easiest on for me. Here it goes:
First off:
I do not write in chapters.
I do not write to a set “hours per day”
I do not write to a set “words per day”
What I do is, I write small segments or scenes from my book. Say a conversation between two characters. Or maybe the description of a room. Something like that. I find this easier, because I can see a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Not the beginning, middle, and end of the entire book. Not the beginning, middle and end of the entire chapter. Just the beginning, middle, and end of that one scene, which in most cases is 2 to 4 paragraphs long or about 600 – 800 words.
I make it my goal to write three of these segmants each day. One in the morning as soon as I wake up, before I even get out of bed. One in the afternoon, when I get back in from taking my dog out for his daily walk. One in the evening, last thing just before going to bed. It takes about 15 – 30 minutes for me to write each segment. Or about 40 minutes to an hour and a half each day. In the end I end up with about 2,750 words written at the end of the day. That is, if I actualy sit down and write at all! I should be writing my NaNoNovel right now, cause I haven’t written anything yet today, but instead I find myself reading blogs from other NaNoers. LOL! Some days it’s just hard to get motivated to start writing.
Anyways, When you take it and break it down into tiny chunks like this, it seems like you haven’t written very much at all, when in fact you have gone well above and beyound your word count goal. I hope this helps. Good luck with your story!
~~EK