NaNoWrapUp or, Winner!

So, my word count has been verified and I am a 2012 NaNoWriMo winner 😀 yes indeed, I wrote 50,000 words (and then some) in the fine month of November, and as we go into the last day, I hope anyone reading this who’s making that last push towards the finish line accepts my best wishes and cheerleading efforts, and a huge well done for when you cross that line and hit that target! For those who’ve already done it, congratulations! For those who didn’t quite manage – if you’ve got even the barest bones of a novel as a result of doing NaNoWriMo, you’re a winner in my book!

So how did my NaNo go? Well, it’s an interesting one. Originally, I had another idea for a story that was going to be my main NaNo, but a few days before it started, an idea came into my head. An already established character in Christopher Maine’s series, during her time at the Terra Firma Fleet Academy. A character I have an affinity for, because she’s based on me, essentially going through the upheaval I’ve been going through recently – leaving home, moving in with new people I’d never met before, making friends, going to new classes and learning new things. Those are the bare bones of the plot; I’ll leave the rest for you guys to uncover when you read it, hint hint 😉

So this was just going to be a little side story – my main NaNovel would be this idea I had a while ago, the one I’d been planning for and had even written a little bit of it (don’t worry, that bit wasn’t going to get used for NaNoWriMo, before I get accused of cheating!), and then when I needed a break from that plot and a little bit of light relief, I’d write about this character’s antics in the Academy.

How did that one work out? …. not like I’d planned it, let’s put it that way.

The original plans got shelved when I started writing this story, tentatively titled “Blue”, and realized that I loved it. Starting with an already-established character (and the blessing of her original creator, Christopher Maine, who gave me permission to create the origins story for her) really did help, because I already had the centre of my little universe – all I needed to do was build up that universe around her. At first I expected it to be difficult, but when it started, it came easily. Characters started appearing in my heads – some of them are ones you’ll recognize from the Christopher Maine books, as you should have all read them, I’ve pestered you guys enough! Others are ones who are entirely my creation – for example, two of her close friends were minor characters, both appearing just a couple of times in the main series. In mine, they’re main characters. However, her two best friends are completely mine, and they both have fairly well-rounded personalities and I’m really pleased with that, because characterization is something I usually struggle with a lot.

Another issue I’ve had this time is attempting not to Mary-Sue, but not with the main character – she has plenty of flaws, the real challenge is finding the good bits about her! (I’m totally kidding, she’s a lovely character but she definitely has her flaws) – it’s her best friend, who at the beginning was just a lovely guy and… yeah. Really vanilla, everything nice and sweet and kind about the world. I needed to find a fault for him, but instead of just throwing in a random one like being really nice and sweet and kind but having a random murderous streak, I looked at his positive aspects and figured out which ones could become negative. He’s loyal to a fault, doesn’t see when people are taking advantage of his kindness and his loyalty is often misplaced. I considered giving him a temper, but a) my main character already has plenty of that, as highlighted by the fight scenes I’ve put her in over the last few days, and b) that’s just not his personality at all. I’ve let the characters run away with themselves, developing their own personalities until actually, I find it hard to talk about them as characters – they’re more like people. I’m not saying they’re imaginary friends, I’m not in danger of having tea parties with them yet, but it’s been really useful because it means they write the stories, they decide what happens – I just have to get it all typed out before they go off on another tangent.

Usually, being ill during NaNoWriMo is a godsend – extra time for writing, yay! However, I’m ill at the moment and it’s not too shiny – I’m sure my wordcount would actually be even higher than the not-too-shabby number it currently stands at, which will stand as my NaNoWriMo final count unless I get any more done today (and manage to validate it in time). I’ve really just felt too ill to write at times, wanting nothing more than to curl up under my duvet and sleep it all away. I think for the last two NaNoWriMos, I’d stay up until stupid o’clock in the morning writing, but sleep has become a precious commodity at uni, so I’ve not been nighttime NaNovelling either (I’m on a bit of an alliterative kick at the moment, can you tell?).

So, what next? It turns out that there is life after NaNoWriMo, although it can seem pretty hard to believe when you emerge from that heady fog thinking “I just wrote 50,000+ words!…. now what?”. Well, there’s always NaNoEdMo – National Novel Editing Month, although for me I believe it’ll be NaNoFinMo, as I attempt to mould this novel into something publishable by June 2013 (I fully intend to take advantage of that CreateSpace offer I get for winning!). Once it’s finished, THEN the editing can begin! In short, this could keep me occupied for a long time.

When I started uni, I was worried I wouldn’t have much time for writing. I’ve found instead that actually, I have more time for writing than ever, because I actively make time for it. I don’t have homework – I set aside a little bit of time each day to work on my pieces for assessment, but once that’s over, apart from eating and sleeping, I can write all the time. Having the privacy of my own space is great, but so is being able to go into the lounge and socialize when I get bored of my imaginary friends and want to speak to some real ones for once 😉

So, onwards into December. If NaNoFinMo/EdMo isn’t your thing, it’s nearly Christmas! Oh, and there’s something called a life – I suppose it wouldn’t hurt any of us to get one, now that we’re not spending each day furiously scribbling/typing away, trying to hammer out these words. Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to have high tea with some of my characters, they’re waiting quite impatiently for me.

 

Signing out (and watching the smoke rising from the keyboard as it breathes a sigh of relief),

Maddy x

(P.S – Want a better idea of what my novel is about? Buy Christopher Maine’s “Tales From The Terra Firma Fleet” series so far on your Kindle, tablet, smartphone or anything else with the Kindle app on it)

Dragon Flight: Renegade – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragon-Flight-Renegade-Tales-ebook/dp/B007B3CZF2/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1354267570&sr=8-5

Dragon Flight : Wrath – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragon-Flight-Wrath-Tales-ebook/dp/B0089CLIT8/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1

Dragon Flight: EndGame – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dragon-Flight-EndGame-Tales-ebook/dp/B00A9HSQ8W/ref=pd_sim_kinc_2

(P.P.S – He also has a blog! www.christophermaine.wordpress.com )

(P.P.P.S – Thanks for reading!).

End of week 3/start of week 4 NaNo update!

So today, if I can write 1,000 words in the next three hours (which shouldn’t be too big an issue, as the words are flowing really easily right now), I will reach 100,000 words. That’s 100,000 words in 23 days, at the same time as maintaining some semblance of a social life, sleeping and that little thing called uni. I’m quite proud, but also quite tired – I think sleep will definitely be in order when I’ve finished, although it could be a while – it’s going to be a trilogy of quite long stories! December is going to be editing month; my chance to polish what I’ve written and get it into a non-Nano format. I’m going to lose a lot of my wordcount because I’m getting rid of some of the bits I’ve written, but I’ll still be well over 50,000 words even with those bits removed.
So this afternoon I’m going to do a little bit of blogging, I think. First of all there will be an exciting announcement regarding Christopher Maine, and then a post about what happens when your character is based on you – and you realize that you’re starting to become a little bit based on your character!

NaNo Update – (Nearly) end of week 2!

I know it’s not quite the end of week 2 yet, but I figured a pre-emptive one was called for because I’m very proud – I reached 50,000 words today. This means I’m well on target for hitting 100k by the end of the month if I keep it up, which would be great. Then December starts and it’s editing time!

I’m quite impressed with myself, especially considering I had an assessment last week and I’m fairly confident with how I did. I thought this’d be the year I struggled with NaNo, but I think the combination of plenty of time to myself to write without distractions, and the bonus of having a story I absolutely love writing and keep coming up with new ideas for really has helped. I am loving everything about my novel so far; I’m well aware it’s only the bare bones and I have a lot of work to do, chopping and cutting and adding a lot of stuff in to flesh it out and make it more realistic, but I really am feeling confident about it. This could become the novel I work on for a good six months, if not more, but it’ll be worth all the time and effort because of just how great I feel. I love my characters, the majority are three-dimensional from what I can tell and I’m working on fleshing out those who need it, and I know what happens – I just need to write it and piece it all together now.

So, hopefully by next week I’ll be at 75k, if not higher, and ready for the final push towards 100k. I know it’s a case of quality rather than quantity, and at the moment my raw, naked novel has plenty of the former but little of the latter, but I know that with a bit of spit and polish in December, I could have a really great novel on my hands!

 

Happy novelling,

Maddy x

And another thing…

Welcome to June! Hope it is a lovely, sunny month for you all. For us, the weather isn’t looking so promising – we’ve just emerged from a heatwave (well, a British heatwave – highs of about 32C, nothing compared to the usual 40C temperatures of places like Australia but hey, a lot of us are pale or ginger over here and we don’t deal with the sun very well) and entered what looks set to be the British summer, plenty of rain and cold temperatures and not much else all summer! Personally, I don’t mind – I’d like nice weather, but I don’t want it to be sweltering all the time. If we can have a week of nice weather for when we go on holiday, that’ll be peachy keen.

I hope all other aspects of June are happy for you all, just like I hope every month is happy for my lovely readers and followers 🙂 for me, the month will consist of finishing my exams and struggling to adjust to life without homework or revision for the next three months, and starting to worry about results day no doubt. I’ve also got the sponsored midnight walk on June 30th – you can find out how to sponsor me on the page called, well, “Sponsor Us” (at the top of the blog), and please do sponsor us because it’s such a worthwhile cause – so I’d better get in training for that, and hopefully this will be the month where I really see a major improvement or, even better, the complete disappearance of this pain and illness 🙂

So, pinch and a punch, first day of the month – happy June, everyone!

I’VE FINISHED! (Kinda).

There will be no more chapters in book one! I will no longer be sitting up until stupid o’clock in the morning, knowing that I’ll probably only get a couple of hours sleep before I wake up for the bus, determined that I “just need to finish this chapter”, and get just another thousand more words, and then I can sleep. No more trying to think of ways to make the chapters as long as possible without them being ridiculously boring, and no more introducing new characters every few chapters (yes, I have to write books two and three, but they’ll have less new characters than the first one by far). I have finished book one… kinda.

I say “kinda”, because I’m not thrilled with how the first few chapters turned out – they’re very short, compared to the later ones, and really lacking in any description of any kind, which is why the word count is so low when I’ve been writing up to 4k-long chapters in the past few days. To be honest, I’m quite proud to have finished it within the time I have – I started it on January 2nd, if I remember correctly, and it’s finished on the 29th, which isn’t bad considering I’ve also had exams and coursework due in (the coursework went great, the exams I’m not so sure, but that didn’t really have much to do with the writing and more with the fact that I’ve been ill and a question came up that we really didn’t think would come up for my Drama exam), and I also have a boyfriend, a social life, a theatre group and I like to just chill out and watch television sometimes too.

So, what have I done today, to celebrate actually finishing my first ever book (kinda)? Well, I went into town with my boyfriend, remembered that it’s Sunday so very few shops are actually open, bought myself a nice scarf in the sale, got some sweets and then stood and watched cars trying to get through the mounds of sand that piled up in the harbour when we had those high winds and storms and stuff last month. And now we’re going to have a lovely roast dinner and a nice evening with my boyfriend, before I traipse off to college tomorrow (joy of joys).

January is nearly over, and although I usually hate January – last year was, of course, an exception in many ways – this year, although college has been rubbish as usual and I’ve been ill-er than usual, I’ve spent most of the month with Daf, it’s been really productive – I wrote a book! (kinda) – and I have really enjoyed it, to be honest. I’m excited now to see what February, and the rest of the year, will bring – hopefully lots more writing, lots more happiness and a lot of excitement! I’m quite tempted to start editing now – I should probably take a couple of days off, otherwise I’ll end up with tendonitis again from this almost non-stop writing – but I’m really excited to make it into a novel I can be really proud of.