Let The NaNoveling Commence!

Yes, this year, for the third year running, I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo. For those who don’t know, it stands for National Novel Writing Month – every November, hundreds of thousands of (crazy) people all over the world try to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Some set their targets even higher, others don’t mind how high they get – they just like the support the NaNo forums and community offers.

This year I’m taking a break from the norm and writing fanfiction, based on Christopher Maine’s “Tales From The Terra Firma Fleet” series. I’ve never tried to write a fanfiction novel before, usually just settling for one-shots or a small number of chapters making up a short story, but this year I’m going the whole hog and trying to write 50,000 words worth of fanfiction.

Want to get involved in NaNo too? Go to www.nanowrimo.org and sign up! Also, if you’re looking for a writing buddy, here’s me – http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/maddiemcmoomin

So far, so good… and fanfiction!

I’ve actually managed to refrain from starting Book Three!

Alright, that might sound a little stupid, considering I only finished book two yesterday, but if you know me and my writing style, you’ll know that I don’t like to leave big gaps, even though I really should. The sensible thing would be for me to leave the writing until after my exams, but that’s never going to happen because a) I love writing too much, b) it’s what I do when trying to unwind after revision and c) I’m fairly confident I’ll get the grades I need for university anyway. I’m not going to let the writing take over and I’ll probably take it a lot slower than the first two books, but I’m still going to carry on writing.

What I am doing, is writing a kind of prequel short story that takes place about forty years before the actual story begins, and so far it’s going quite well. It’s quite weird, really – I used to write fanfiction for Harry Potter, and my style of fanfiction writing is very similar to the style I’m using in this short story – as in, it’s not actually part of the main plot, but it’s developing the relationship of two of the main-ish characters way before the story began. It’s like writing a fanfic for my own novel, which is quite odd.

Most authors seem to really dislike fanfiction, but I’ve always thought that one of the things I’d look forwards to the most if I was to ever become a published author would be reading the fanfiction my fans write (if I was to ever get any fans, that is). At the same time, I realize that if they started doing slash fanfiction (as in, putting the two main female MCs together and completely disregarding canon), or made everyone completely out of character, or worse, did a – *shudder* – High School AU  version, I’d have to fight the very strong urges to send them a strongly-worded email advising them to re-read my books. I’d fight it, because I appreciate that my book would be in the public domain and people want to interpret the characters as they see fit, but I’m such a control freak/perfectionist, and I hate things that aren’t canon, I think I’d have to stop myself from reading any fanfiction about my novel!

Sometimes I think I’d like to get back into writing fanfiction – I used to really enjoy it. However, I love the freedom that writing my own, original story gives me. I don’t have to stick to a plot or characters that have been written by someone else (I know, you can do AU fanfics but like I said, I only want to write canon fics), I can create my own characters with their own personalities, their own worlds, their own lives and rules and things like that. But I’m not going to say no to writing some fanfiction at some point, if the right idea came along!