At this moment, it's about 10:30pm on November 30th. And my NaNoWriMo document is currently sitting at 50,131 words.
That's right friends. After 5 years of not reaching 50k,
I've done it.
There's more that I want to say about it. About, I don't
know, the process and the things I've learned. I came in here intending to say
all that. But I think I'll save that for next time. I wrote 7,500 words today.
I can't write any more.
But I wanted to tell you all, I've done it.
I'll see you next time.
Well, it's November. Which means two things. One, I forgot about October. Whoops. Two, it's NaNoWriMo.
So last we… spoke, I had a pile of tropes and character
traits and plot elements. Well, now I have a vaguely steampunk treasure-hunting
action adventure with a search for a mysterious treasure hidden by a long-gone
secret society. I'm actually pretty excited for it.
At this point, I'm not quite 2,000 words in. Barely beginning.
But I'm on the second chapter and I already have something I want to talk
about: POV.
For the uninitiated, that's Point of View. There's a lot of options for POV. 1st person vs. 3rd person (and yes, also 2nd person, but that's rarely used). Single vs. multi. Omniscient vs. limited vs objective. I'm not going to get into all the details of all the different kinds. Suffice it to say it's a matter of who we are following through the story, and how close we're following them.
I didn't do a lot of writing in August. Writing adjacent, sure.
What I did was read through my vampire novel-in-progress and
list out what happened in each chapter and each scene. The purpose of this was
to have a nice, easy to skim summary of the plot, because there are some scenes
I need to rewrite. See, they were just hastily chucked in there as a means to
an end. I needed to get from Point A to Point C and something had to be
Point B. Just things like, I need this character to learn this piece of
information, and these characters need to be over here for this next thing to
happen. But I don't much care for them, so they're going to be changed. And I
just wanted a nice overview so I could see how each change would cascade and
affect later scenes.
So that was August. I mean, that was a few days in August.
But on to September.
Camp NaNo: July Edition was just spend working on backstories for various characters for my vampire novel-in-progress.
You know, the sort of music they like, how they got where they are, and that Nazi Germany apparently had something to do with vampire hunting. I'm not sure what yet, and I even said, out loud, "I wonder why that is?" as though I hadn't just written it and caused it to happen.
It's been a while, I know. Sorry about that.
So, Camp NaNo. I ended up not making my word goal. Which was fine. I said, "I'll just extend my timeframe and keep working on this." I did not. This was not fine.
I decided literally on April 1st what I wanted to write for Camp NaNo. I had toyed with the idea of using the month for revising my novel, or maybe writing a new short story (not that I had any potential plots in mind).
In the end, I chose to go with something I've never done
during a NaNoWriMo event: nonfiction.
See, I have this history research project that will require me to write several short summaries of events. I have a good-sized list of potential topics, I just have to sit down and write them. Enter, Camp NaNo.
I know I skipped February. I'm sorry. But I hadn't done any writing, so I had nothing to report. Instead, I was putting off writing in favor of a somewhat time-sensitive sewing project. And I was putting that off in favor of watching Netflix. But I finished the shows I wanted to watch. And then I made a skirt. So now I have nothing left to stop me from writing.
Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in April. I have no idea what I'm going to do for it. Might write a short story. Might revise my vampire novel. So in preparation for the second possibility, I've started rereading the latest draft of Cold Blooded.
I haven't done much writing thus far in 2022, and so haven't had much to blog about. So I thought that today I would instead look ahead, and talk about what I'm hoping to do this year.
Revisions
As you're surely aware by now, I have a lot of first drafts
lying around. They're never going to go anywhere if I don't polish them up. I
have a couple in mind to work on.
I have meant to write this post since the beginning of
December, but kept getting distracted by, you know, things. This is just one of
three or four projects I've just not done this month. So don't feel
special. I'm neglecting everything equally.
So.
Let's talk about my NaNoWriMo novel, the rewriting of Cold
Blooded.
In the end, it was not 50,000 words. It clocked in at
36,153. Which might not seem like a lot, but of the past five years, when I
have not reached 50K, this one has the most words. Fun Fact: The last time I
did reach 50K was 2016, with the first version of Cold Blooded.
Despite knowing there was very little chance of actually
reaching 50K in such a short amount of time, I still went all out on the last
day and managed to write 5,450 words on November 30th. If I could just write
that many every day, I'd be set. At that point, my goal was less to hit the
word count goal, and more to just get to the end of the story. So I wrote the
entire Third Act in one day. Which, yes, means Act Three (which should be a
quarter of the book) is only 5K words long. But that's fine. It's a rough
draft.
Now, stats. You know how much I love stats.
I am really nailing this flashback shit.
My outline has some less than helpful direction, like
"reveal some backstory here." Useless. But here I am, just writing
along, and somehow seamlessly sliding into the past based on something that's
happening in the present.
I am so good at this.
And these were just the good flashbacks. *rubs hands together* *cackles maniacally* Just wait until we get into the Dark Flashbacks™.