Thursday, December 1, 2011

NaNoWriMo 2011 Wrap Up

OK, so I admit it. I'm a glutton for punishment, so last year after I finished writing my tale for NaNoWriMo and I realized that the tale I had started was not the one I had ended, what did I do, I started thinking about doing it again.
It is now December, and if you look in the top right corner of your browser, that little postage stamp looking thing. It says I did it again!

The way I see it, the month of November is a good time to shake up things, change something in how I write. Last year I started using Scrivener's demo to write in, and when I won, I liked it so much I bought a mac license. This year I will be purchasing a Windows license for the software. Yes, I like it that much! My new thing this year was to overcome one of my shortcomings. I am daunted by endings and last years NaNo is a prime example of why. So this year, two things happened. First, back in June or July, I had an idea for a new story which I purposely put off to the side for NaNo. I let it stew, and made notes, developed the characters, even had a couple of great lines lined up for some of the characters.

Second, I wrote the ending first, well second. I sat down on day 2 (day 1 was family photo day) and wrote the opening chapter and the ending chapter. There, it was done! Now I only had to make one meet the other. So I began with chapter two, and let me tell you, when I got to the ending, there were a few minor things that needed to be changed to bring it in line with the chapter before it, but pretty much the end that is there 28 days later is the ending I wrote at the beginning.

Another successful experiment if I do say so myself, and one I plan on using for my other tales.

The other thing that helped me out this year (besides my super supportive family) was that I stayed ahead of the curve for almost every day. The suggested writing goal was every day write 1666 words and after 30 days you would have your 50k. I chose 2k as my goal knowing there would be a day or two (or three) that I would not have time to write at all, or not enough time to write and that the extra cushion I was adding in would help. It did, as did many days of writing 3k words. I guess the point is, getting ahead helped me from falling behind, even when I did not write for 2 days straight.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing "Ghosts of Avalon" and I can not wait to get alpha feedback from my wife, hit the highlighter and red pen next month, and then start getting more feedback, hopefully by the end of March.

2 comments:

Steeven R. Orr said...

I will most certainly be trying that method of writing the opening and ending first when I start my next story.

archnemesis_goldenhair said...

The Man with a Plan! Congrats again, I hope to be able someday to tell someone, as they look at the back of one of your books, I knew that guy before he was a published author.

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