NaNoWriMo's Over. I won!

December 2, 2011

     Let me start by apologizing.  I've been remiss in my blogging.  I've got stories going back to before Thanksgiving, but you've heard nothing from me here.  I blame the month of November.  NaNoWriMo specifically.  National Novel Writing Month has been around for 11 years.  This was my first year attempting it, but I've known about it for several years.
     No one has been more encouraging and supportive than Tina.  She not only pushed me into doing this, but named the book before she convinced me I was going to write it.  The opening scene popped into my head sometime in the following several days, and typed it up on November 1st.  For the early part of November, I think I did fairly well keeping everything going, but later in the month I became more focused (some might say obsessed).  I have never written in this way before -- putting little thought into what I'm going to write and let the words and ideas flow out of me.  I literally learned about my characters as I wrote, and it felt to me much more like reading a book than writing one.  I would literally sit down with a general goal (e.g., I need to some how connect the events in this scene with that one, or this character needs a personality), and let my fingers try to keep up with the ideas sprouting in my head.

A graph of my progress over the month

     Those that knew me in college know that I tend to spend days or weeks mentally composing an essay --reading, assimilating information, connecting dots -- so that I basically have a fully written piece composed in my head, making the typing more of a formality.  Having the typing be the process of creation was liberating and frustrating.  I think the liberation is obvious, but the frustration came when things would happen that I didn't necessarily like.  Sometimes situations would tie themselves up too neatly and it felt contrived.  Perhaps there is a lot of revision left to do.  (Right now I'm editing the draft I have to make it readable for my copy editors.)
     But in any case, 50,272 words later, I'm done with the writing of The Rapscallions, and I finished it with a little over twelve hours to go.  Hopefully, I'll have a Kindle/Nook/iBook book for you to buy sometime soon.  In the meantime, enjoy the weekend reading material -- I plan to catch up a bit!