Ready or Not—It’s NaNo Time!
October is drawing to an end and we all know what that means. No, I’m not thinking of Halloween. It’s NaNo time!
Last year my NaNoWriMo experience was hardly successful. Lots of that was due to circumstances I couldn’t do anything about, such as the death of a family member and some other sad events.
Still, I managed to write about 30,000 words of what will be the second book in my fantasy series, and eventually finished the draft of that novel in February.
It’s still sitting there, patiently waiting to be edited.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on the other novels in my series. The first is edited and out with beta readers. The third has made it out of my head and I’ve got some brief notes of the story line, and even some major plot points.
Most of my effort has been directed to the fourth, the one I’ll write during NaNo.
I’ve got a solid outline. And for once, I have a working title: Consuming Fire. I’ve sketched my main characters, including three new major ones who don’t appear in the first two books. I’ve described some of the main settings and even found pictures to do with them.
This morning I thought through the timeline of the story, and how it aligns with the changing seasons and phases of the moon (or both moons, as the world I’ve created is lucky enough to have.)
I’m determined to finish, no matter what happens this month.
As I look at my calendar, I’m not so sure. We’ll be celebrating four birthdays (my dad’s 90th, mine, my niece’s birthday, and my grandson’s). Once we get past all of that, Thanksgiving will be upon us, and we’ll be having two nieces in from out of town, staying with us for four days.
There’s no other hope for it. I wish I could stick with the standard NaNo pace of 1667 words a day. That is actually quite doable.
I’ve counted the days it’s not likely I’ll be writing much and came up with nine. That means I need to log 2381 words a day.
Knowing how my life goes, I’m going to shoot for 4000 a day when I know I have time to write, and whatever I can squeeze into spare corners of time. A few hundred words here and there can add up.
So what about you? Anyone else going to go for it, try to write a novel next month?
Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you posted on how well Consuming Fire is coming along.