A NaNo win again
Fifty thousand words and counting
Once again, I have overcome the obstacles, beat the odds, (insert cliché here), and created fifty thousand words of not necessarily great prose in less than thirty days. I have succeeded in the National Novel Writing Month challenge.
Toward the middle of the month, I had my doubts. Sure, I’ve completed the NaNo challenge of 50,000 words in each of the previous years that I’ve participated, but I had fallen farther behind than I had ever done before.
Then I rallied, and I came back with a couple of 5,000-word days. I reached the 50K mark Monday night on a surge … in more ways than one. From about 49,500 words to 50,500 words was the most emotionally complex piece of erotica I’ve ever written. Yeah, NaNo is supposed to be about quantity, not quality, but I’m especially fond of those last thousand words.
Wait, I hear some of you saying. Wasn’t I writing a mystery novel, sub-genre “cozy”? You know, the kind with all sorts of sweet eccentric characters, and not too much blood and gore, and definitely not any sex other than that which is obliquely referred to? Well, that’s the kind of thing that happens in NaNo – novels break out of their bounds, and end up going someplace outside of the proverbial box. I knew my cozy wasn’t going to be so cozy when not just one, but two characters showed up with really big handguns of the sort that show up in hard-boiled detective novels. (For the gun aficionados out there, both were Webley-Fosbery .445 automatic revolvers – a really sweet piece of steel, and not an oxymoron in this case.)
No, the novel isn’t finished yet; I figure there are about 20,000 more words I need to reach the conclusion and tidy everything up – except, of course, the burning questions that are left for the sequel.
Once again, I have overcome the obstacles, beat the odds, (insert cliché here), and created fifty thousand words of not necessarily great prose in less than thirty days. I have succeeded in the National Novel Writing Month challenge.
Toward the middle of the month, I had my doubts. Sure, I’ve completed the NaNo challenge of 50,000 words in each of the previous years that I’ve participated, but I had fallen farther behind than I had ever done before.
Then I rallied, and I came back with a couple of 5,000-word days. I reached the 50K mark Monday night on a surge … in more ways than one. From about 49,500 words to 50,500 words was the most emotionally complex piece of erotica I’ve ever written. Yeah, NaNo is supposed to be about quantity, not quality, but I’m especially fond of those last thousand words.
Wait, I hear some of you saying. Wasn’t I writing a mystery novel, sub-genre “cozy”? You know, the kind with all sorts of sweet eccentric characters, and not too much blood and gore, and definitely not any sex other than that which is obliquely referred to? Well, that’s the kind of thing that happens in NaNo – novels break out of their bounds, and end up going someplace outside of the proverbial box. I knew my cozy wasn’t going to be so cozy when not just one, but two characters showed up with really big handguns of the sort that show up in hard-boiled detective novels. (For the gun aficionados out there, both were Webley-Fosbery .445 automatic revolvers – a really sweet piece of steel, and not an oxymoron in this case.)
No, the novel isn’t finished yet; I figure there are about 20,000 more words I need to reach the conclusion and tidy everything up – except, of course, the burning questions that are left for the sequel.
posted by Carol Anne | 12:41 AM
2 Comments:
Congratulations. That is an amazing feat.
Carol Anne also found time to teach four classes, organize the Thanksgiving feast at our vacation cabin in the mountain woods, sail in the Commodore's Cup on November 17th, and take a cruising sailor out on the long skinny boat on November 10th.
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