My NaNoWriMo journey
November has come to an end, meaning an end to NaNo. Yes, it's over, finally! If you don't know it: NaNoWriMo is about writing 50000 words in November. This was the second time I participated. I still find it a bit of a hell, but a very productive hell!
My NaNo summary: Number of words: the counter says 50700, but I am not sure that's right. I count edited words as well - editing existing chapters was part of my NaNo goal - so the number of written words is much lower. Around 35k, i believe. Edited words are hard to count though, I only realised at the end I had looked at more words than I realised. Personal goal: get Lienne's arc on paper. Succeeded: yes! Like pretty much all the way to the end of book one! It feels so nice to have the end there, it ties up story arcs of other characters as well. Things that weren't planned: I wrote down bits of chapters about Morgan, and Selanji. And there is this. That's not even the right fandom! Sentence I'm most proud of: 'Beep.' I'm not kidding. I laugh too much at my own, lame, in-story jokes. What I've learnt... - that, personality-wise, Lienne is harder to write down than Rain. Lienne is very mallable, but how far can you go with that before it becomes unrealistic? Rain is just... Rain. Wise and increadibly stupid at the same time, and stubborn as ever. The only problem with him is to keep him consistent, but that's it. - That said, Rain finally feels like a decent character. I spotted development. - I need to adjust elven lore a bit. Their religion is a bit different than I imagined. - Hmm, I already noticed it, but NaNo confirmed it: I am so productive between 8 and 9 in the morning. - Maybe you remember me making an outline for book one? I wouldn't call it a waste of time, but man, it certainly changed a lot. So no more outlines for me, I'll just stick to a very vague idea of a story and just let that grow organically. I absolutely love it when awesome things pop up that make sense as well :D - NaNoWriMo promotes quantity >> quality, otherwise it is hard to reach 50k. Kill your inner editor, you can do that later. Just write... I so disagree with that. If my inner editor spots an ugly sentence and comes up with a pretty one, I'll edit! If my inner editor sees a character behaving out of character, I'll edit! Especially that last one happened a lot here. I wasn't sure if characters should like each other at certain points, so I had to go back and see if they behaved according to their nature (this is where Lienne became so problematic, I still haven't solved it completely). NaNoWriMo would say 'make a note about it, skip it and write the next chapter' but how can you do that if you don't know if the characters want to hug or kill each other (really, things went this extreme for me). Character relationships matter so much, I can throw away entire chapters if i get it wrong. Editing saves stories, don't ignore it during NaNo. What I will do next... - Fix Lienne, her mood swings need to make more sense. - The ending needs to be 'bigger', with higher stakes and such. I have this god-guy that needs to show his face, time to throw him in the story. Still, I have the feeling my story is just a series of equally important events, not events that get scarier, more awesome, more dangerous and more important with time. - Lienne's arc connects to Orion's and Morgan's, so I need to clean theirs up a bit and let it match Lienne's. - Continue editing the first chapters to the point I consider them done. So how about you? did you participate in NaNoWriMo? What were your personal goals and did you make it? best wishes, Pam/Queen of Eagles
