It's been a while hasn't it!! And to think I was so committed to writing more regularly. Well let me fill you on why I am back. I had been tipping away at a novel for a while but not getting very far with it. I had written about 8000 words and had a rough outline for the rest of it. I was unsure of what to do with it and where to go with it so it had stalled. Then, just by chance, on the 31st of October, I heard about something called NaNoWriMo (which is short for National Novel Writing Month). The idea behind it is that you write daily for the 30 days of November and you 'win' it if you write 50000 words. I though well why not!! So I ditched the 8000 words I had written and started again. I decided that I wanted to write 60000 words cos I felt 50000 seemed short for a novel. 60000 is short too, mind you but it's more than 50000!! So I started a routine of writing 2000 words a day. 1000 in the morning and 1000 in the evening. I said to myself that if I can do this for a month I would achieve 2 things. 1) I would be able to say I wrote a book, and 2) I might get a habit of daily writing from it.
Well I did it. Yesterday I finished my 62000 page novel called Twins. It is mine and I am delighted. I have no idea what the writing is like. I am certain that there are many plot holes in it and that it would need a huge amount of work to make it readable, but that is the point of NaNoWriMo. It is about experiencing the joy of writing and completing a book and about suppressing the inner critic and editor. As I was writing I would be aware that I needed a character to have a certain skill. To suddenly introduce that skill at the time it is needed is poor writing. So I will have to go back and mention this as part of the characters description earlier in the novel. But that's OK. Normally I would have stopped the writing and gone back and done it. But with NNWM you just plow on.
And today is the first day that I have not had the book to write. I kind of miss it. I feel there is more I could add to the people I have had living in my head for a month and they grew as the word count grew. Some characters ended up doing things I hadn't planned and that dictated the direction the novel took. But that's good too. I think the whole plot hangs together well. Now I'm not saying I have a blockbuster on my hands, but I have my 1st book.
As for the daily habit, well here I am. I would like to write 1000 words every day but I think I will settle for anything between 500 and whatever. I will probably use the daily writing as a sort of journal for a few days before I start on another story. Who knows it may form the basis for the next novel I write.
I will be leaving Twins alone for at least a month to 6 weeks (on the advice of Stephen King in On Writing) and during that time I plan to study the way fiction should work and learn a little about editing. There is a NaNoEdMo in March for editing the book. I don't know if I can wait that long but we'll see.
There is a scriptwriting equivalent called Script Frenzy in April so I will probably so that. And there is no reason why I can't just so a MyNoWriMo in any month I choose. So that's it. I would recommend NaNoWriMo to anyone and everyone who has ever felt they had a book in them. It helps you to just write it.
That's it for now.
I will be writing daily from now on (I created a chain on Don't Break The Chain and I would like to keep it unbroken) so I will be back.
