Tag: National Novel Writing Month

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GKP Writing News

Ending NaNo

I’ve participated in NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) every year since 2008. Many of my novels began as those mad November dashes. Now I hear they are ending NaNo.

The Challenge

Every November the goal was to write 50,000 words of a new novel before the end of the month. This is 1,670 words a day.

At the beginning this sounded like a huge undertaking. And it was. The result was a rough draft novel mostly done.

The purpose was to goad and urge the writer to write straight through the novel idea. There was no time to rethink or edit, only time to keep writing. The self doubts, the little voice saying the writing is no good, had no chance to make much headway as there was that 1,670 word goal to reach.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was my first NaNo novel back in 2008. The first year the novel fell apart. It did get me started and I completed the challenge every year after that.

Ending NaNo

I didn’t interact with the forums very much as I have little internet time each week. Rumors started up about people abusing the forum spaces and how NaNo was run.

How much of this was true? I don’t know and really don’t care. All that matters is that my November challenge is now gone.

Over the summer, my time gets split up in so many directions. There is supposed to be a couple of hours each morning to write, but hot weather pushes me outside. When I get in, I’m tired, too tired to write.

NaNo gave me a push to get my writing time back on track again. Somehow, it’s easier to have an outside push than to make the effort myself.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
This novel turned out to be much longer and more complicated than any I had done previously. I started doing CampNaNo to finish this book and later used Camp to work on picture books and other novels.

What Now?

Can I find another writing group to work with? Surely there are some out there, mostly on Facebook which I am not. And searching takes time I don’t have.

So, for now, I’m on my own. It’s easy to pretend to do NaNo in November or Camp NaNo in April and July. It’s also easy to let it slide as there is no set deadline looming.

And I have a history of missing deadlines so I will miss NaNo. Still, there are those books to finish this year.

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GKP Writing News

Finishing NaNo

Life’s Rules is not done. Yes, finishing NaNo did happen, but not with a completed draft. Difficulties arose.

The Idea

Before November, I made out a bullet list of the major scenes I expected to occur in my nove Life’s Rules. And the first fifteen thousand words went according to plan.

Then the novel took a sharp turn. The bullet list became obsolete. Even though the novel still moved in the same general direction, the route had changed.

Hated Timelines

This novel draft was supposed to move from beginning to end with little deviation. Finishing NaNo with a rough draft seemed a sure thing.

Instead I ended up with a different novel, one requiring a timeline. And I didn’t have one. I blundered on for thousands of words until the novel began to look like a disaster happening in slow motion.

Solution

There were three possibilities. One was to abandon the whole thing, write something else. That wasn’t what I wanted to do.

A second was to continue with the disaster I was working on. The ending draft might be over the fifty thousand words, but it would be a mess requiring months of work and rewrite to straighten out.

This alternative was not attractive. I don’t mind doing rewrites. I do mind doing unnecessary rewrites. And this would be one.

That left the third alternative. I started back at the beginning and did a rewrite of the twenty-three thousand words I’d completed.

This time I put in the timeline. It meant adding some new material and deleting other scenes. Some got altered to fit into the timeline.

cover for "Broken Promises" by Karen GoatKeeper
This was my first attempt to complete NaNo. I had an idea. I had a bullet list. And it all went wrong. Unlike this month, I kept slogging on and ended up with 50,000 words I totally discarded. It wasn’t until several years later I revisited this novel idea and wrote “Broken Promises”.

The Result

I ended up finishing NaNo with half a draft. It isn’t completely right. It needs another thirty or forty thousand more words to finish the draft. This can be done in December.

Perhaps I did break an unwritten rule of NaNo of not editing. However, I ended up with half a draft of workable prose.

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GKP Writing News

Ending Two Novels

National Novel Writing Month makes November special for me. It gives me license to write madly with no or few doubts about what I’m writing. It’s often the beginning of a new novel. This year is hopefully ending two novels.

Most of my novels began as NaNo drafts. Sometime in September or October the shadow of an idea occurs. It’s at the edge of my mind, teasing me, eluding me for a time.

One day this little idea grows up into characters and plot. The new novel waits for me to write it down.

cover for "Dora's Story" by Karen GoatKeeper
I was driving when the idea of a Black Beauty type novel about a goat occurred to me. I was only going a few miles, but had thought of the goat and several possible events for this new novel begun during another November NaNo and finished during two Camp NaNo sessions.

Planning For November

This year I didn’t go looking for an idea for a new novel. I have three sitting around waiting for my attention. One is a disaster in need of a total rethinking and rewriting.

The other two are unfinished. It’s not that I don’t know or have a good idea what that ending is. I do. I just haven’t written the endings down yet.

So I decided to spend NaNo ending two novels.

The goal is 50,000 words, a novella. Both of my novels are three quarters done. Neither needs another 50,000 words. Together I should have the word total.

NaNo asks the potential writer to say what novel is being worked on. I thought about it and decided to go with “The Carduan Chronicles”.

In between “The Chemistry Project” investigations and puzzles and the “Dent County Flora” pictures, memories of Cardua surfaced. I remembered names, events, where the novel left off.

November Begins

November 1 dawned. I sat down at my computer. And opened my flood/isolation novel instead.

It’s a good thing I’m ending two novels this November. I’m 16,000 words into Mindy’s story and building to the climax. About 10,000 more words will end this draft.

That won’t end work on this novel. I have lots of research to do, people to interview, rewriting to do. But it will finish the rough draft.

And it will leave me about 25,000 words to use about Cardua.

Maybe I won’t have a new novel this December. But ending two novels is reason to celebrate.