I Must Be Crazy
I wrote one novel last year – Blood Bound.
I am hoping to write another this year – Lionheart (book one).
Failing that, I would like to have written the majority of that book, and have a lot of another also done. That’s because there is this one thing.
I’ve decided to do NaNo this coming November. For the first time ever.
Don’t worry, there is method to this madness of mine. At least, I think it is madness… no wait. It’s madness.
See, I have so many ideas in my head that they are fighting to get out. As my beta has summed up, when it comes to stories in my head there is “one wizard, one ghost, two fairies on the backburner, the occasional prodding of a mermaid, a superhero, and an entire string of vampires”. And that’s not including fleeting ideas like Earthshakers and the one about the Museum of Time.
Of those ideas, only one – Blood Bound – has been completed, and even that story morphed very quickly and easily into an entire series, with several books already with outlines forming in my head1.
Of the rest, only Lionheart, The Superhero Diaries and Bones have had anything written. And the latter two have been bumped back to “secondary” status.
So why am I doing NaNo this year? Basically to get as much of one idea out and done as I can. I don’t expect to write a full 50 000 words for The Circled Green – my Victorian era faerie story – but I can use it as a means of motivating myself to write a fair chunk of it. 20 000 words of TCG in one month? A heck of a lot better than anything else I have done.
But right now I am working steadily on Lionheart, and using Write Or Die to help me along. My big problem is that I am far too easily distracted, and WOD helps keep me focussed by reminding me when I am starting to wander. I wrote 700 words today, and over 400 those in under the 15 minute time period I allotted myself with WOD.
Imagine what I can do if I do that more than just once a day… I might not be so crazy after all.
- Sadly, I have to wait until book four in the series, Bite Club, for the murderous sorority girls to appear. But when they do… oh, will I have fun. I love that book already. [↩]
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Murderous sorority girls? Ooooh…why did yo have to use my name already? Can you name one of them Chastity for me? Please?
Oohh, good luck with NaNo! I’ve always wanted to try it but November is a horrible month for me personally, with end-of-semester papers/exams, going home for the first time in the semester (Thanksgiving break) and all this other hectic stuff that it’s just impossible for me to even attempt NaNo. I envy your determination!
LOL! Wow that sounds interesting murderous sorority girls ahahah. I died laughing of that one. I think I am going to attempt NaNo this year. I just posted my current project with an excerpt of it, check it out and telll me what you think
As someone who has won NaNo, it’s not that hard, to be honest. You only have to write about 1300 words per day to meet the goal – I managed to do it, and I’m a busy high school student. If I get in the right frame of mind, I can bang out those words in about two or three hours – I’ll start when I get home from school and finish long before bed. And, truly, with NaNo, it doesn’t matter if it’s crap. The point is just to write. You have eleven months after that to edit and make it un-crap.
I didn’t do it last year because I was generally overwhelmed, but I haven’t been writing for awhile because of a combination of circumstances, so I’m hoping to do it again this November to get me back into the swing of things.
NaNo is fun. Really. Sometimes when I was writing, especially my second time, I wanted to throw my computer against the wall, but it’s a great way to get a story out on paper. Or in a word document. I’m not sure if I’ll do it this year due to intensive school classes, but I might try. Crazy-intensive-writer-mode is actually sort of a nice place to be. =D
@Chastity: Maybe.
If you’re good. But really, you are the only one to directly have a character named after them, and she’s a pretty important one for at least the first few books.
@Clem: It’s incredibly hard if you are a poorly motivated and lazy sod like me. That’s why it takes me so long to write a single one at the moment. I am getting better though.