The Time of Year: Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

When life hands you lemons .... You know it's just about time for National Novel Writing Month!

The first year I tried the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November, I had an opening scene and an ending paragraph, and some ideas for filler -- "word count" -- and that was it. The journey was sheer drama as I was freed to write dreck such as I had never imagined ... well, no. I had imagined it, I just never would have had the gall to type it out, if not for the promise that no one else would ever have to see it. It became autobiographical in spots, wildly romantic in others, and though it ended up being a good book, that first whack in November of 2001 STUNK.

2002's prospect was decided on in December of 2001, when I suddenly had become a writer and had nothing to urge me on. The Piker Press was founded the next spring, and having had that encouragement, NaNoWriMo 2002 was a welcome activity. I wrote "Time Traveler" in 21 days, buffeted by the passion to tell the tale.

In 2003, I vowed to have fun with NaNoWriMo, and wrote "Character Assassin," which remains my favorite book. It needed almost no editing -- just a spell check. It's also a great example of a writer's retreat: for nearly 30 days I just spent examining what my characters in various stories were like. (And it was indeed fun!)

2004 I breezed through "Out With The Trash" thanks to Wendy Robards, who gave me her mornings to work on character development. OWTT still needs a final edit, and a strengthening of one chapter, but you know how editing goes. Especially when you're writing other stuff, and that year, I was working on the second volume of Aser Stories.

NaNoWriMo 2005 I started one self-indulgent story, switched to one that would provide the Press with material, and then just gave up. I regretted that a lot for the next year.

2006 I thought about a serious venue, then opted in favor of following Aser and Danner to a bar. I figured I could go from bar to bar in Midgardian realms and get a lot of beer and word count. Little did I realize that Aser and Danner would run right into a murder mystery! It was really an exciting and amusing month, following them around and writing down their adventures.

I'm tempted to do that again this year. I like Danner and Aser, and Aser's friend Margot the Troll. And I never got around to spa-hopping with them last year, as the murder mystery delayed the start of their journey. And at the end of the book I wrote last fall, they'd managed to pick up a new ensemble character, Harn Ashwood, who became fascinated by the shaman way of life and probably needs an education on what that really means ...

Hoo. Now I can really hardly wait.