Look back at blog one – a good journey for the novel and novelist?
Certainly. I don’t think any of these words would have happened without it. It does remind you that writing is a lot about discipline, not always waiting for inspiration to strike.
I never did find out what those random objects in the back garden are. Well, my flatmate reliably informed me (he has a reliable face) that one of them is a disposable barbecue. I guess this is where it’s been disposed of. Now that night falls early and I tend to work evening shifts, I rarely see daylight anyway and don’t look out there much. I think around about 10,000 words it became winter and I was too busy to notice.
Did you enjoy the experience?
Ye-es. There wasn’t really time to reflect on whether I was enjoying it, whether it was a good idea while it was going on. It just seemed some sort of inevitable life choice.
Now November is over, when do you think you’ll revisit your NaNo novel again?
I’ve got some more to write that’s in my head already, as I didn’t manage to finish the full 50k. Although I did win a book token in the Dead Poets Slam, so it was worth taking that bit of time off to memories a few poems and buy a hat. (Cost of hat less than value of book token, so all okay.)
How many words do you see the final version of your manuscript being?
I think it should be developed a bit more, probably ending up full novel length of 80,000 words.
Do you have any advice you could pass on to others who are considering entering NaNoWriMo 2014?
Perhaps a little more planning would have been wise. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to plan the end of a novel without first writing the first half of a novel.
And finally… would you do it again?!
I see that happening. In 12 months time I’ll have forgotten how tiring it was and it will seem a fabulous idea.
For more on NaNoWriMo and to follow our other writers, please take a look here.
Congratulations on winning, Alex.
I did NaNoWriMo this year, for the first time, and really enjoyed it. I "won" - that is, wrote over 50,000 words. Just. I now have a VERY rough first draft, which will need a lot of work before it becomes a novel of perhaps 70 or 80k words. For now it's in a drawer, where it will wait for at least a couple of months while I finish a previous project.
I'll have a better idea of whether it was successful when I come back to it. But, for now, I think the November rush has helped me put together both the structure and a rough implementation of a complete novel, and that feels good...
Writing a novel is like catching an eel - really hard until you learn the knack. The only way to get the hang of it is to spend a lot of time just wrestling with the little buggers - I actually have at least two novels waiting for me to dissect Nano 2011 and separate them. From what you've told us, though, this was fairly new territory for you so I'd stick at it if you can - just with the realisation that you'll probably have to edit it with a chainsaw.
Which can be really good. Last year I wrote about 20k for Nano, and none of it was good except for the plot. Once I've tweaked things for the submission - and gotten myself braced for dismissal - I'm going back to the story I started last year because it has passed my beta-reader (my Dad) and apart from some technical errors and grammatical differences it has been approved for attacking slush piles and the one editor I have a vague professional connection with.