The NaNoWriMo Experience

I have been told by several people that I need to post more often, and I well mean to...but I forget. When I first started this blog I had many ideas for short stories, but unfortunately that was over two year's worth of ideas from when I was writing my last novel. I mean to make post more often just about my life and the things I do, but I either do not have to time, or I forget. So to all of you who have been biting their nails in anticipation for my next post, here it is.

The Great NaNoWriMo Experience

For Novel Info Click Here

Week One:

On the first day I sat down to the keyboard and computer screen, the line the letter follow as you typed them blinked impatiently, as classical Christmas song played from a Pandora station I had specially created for this book. I had been waiting a very long time for this moment. I had already made a plot line for my novel, but was still willing to change the plot and characters as was needed.  I took a deep breath, and spent half an hour designing the page lay out.

There were choices such as which font to use, whether to write out the chapter number or use numerals, or even to have the chapters numbered at all. There was also were to position it and how to make it look. I know these features seem trivial, but such things really add to the whole feel of the book, and I know there are least a few of you who agree when I say it is easier to write if the layout matches the feeling you are going for in the book.

Since it was Monday, I had piano lessons at 3:45. I managed to get nearly a thousand words after school, but before lessons. After lessons I rushed down stairs, (that is where the computer I use was,) and pounded out another 1,078 words, making of grand total 78 words over my daily goal of 2,000. I know it was only suppose to be 1,677, but I thought the extra 323 words a day would not take that long, and would help if there was a day I did not get much done, or completely skipped a day, more would it take to put in an extra 323 words.

Tuesday did not go so well. I baby sat in the morning, got my flue shots in the afternoon, and went to play practice in the evening. Remarkably though, I scrapped out 1,000 words in between everything else. I made up for the lose on Wednesday, by pretty much spending all evening writing. The typing went at I fast clip at that point, for I had reached a chapter that just seemed to flow. Funny how sometimes what I wrote seemed to flow and other times I would write a few words, not like them, erase them, and then spend ten minutes staring at the computer screen, to only repeat the process.

The rest of the week went fairly well. After the first three days I do not remember any real specifics.

It is always weird starting a new novel. I feel like you hardly know the characters, even though I made them up, and I always wonder how things will turn out. Will that one scene turn out like I intended? Will the characters start acting in unexpected ways? Will I even finish, or will I fail half way through?

The whole first week it almost felt like writing a really long introduction. It felt like all I did in the first week was explain the characters and set them up for the story a  head of them. This feeling was probably exaggerated by the fact that the first week I mainly worked on Part One, which is about a fourth of the whole book and 80% of it had been written in the first week. Part One does have a very introduction feeling to it anyway. So when I had finished writing the last few words on day seven, I still felt like I had barely meant my characters. That I had only been introduced to them and had yet to go into a deeper relationship. I had yet to actually tell a story instead tell about a future story.