2010 National Novel Writing Month

I started my first NaNoWriMo with a good, solid story in my head for a playfully odd town with some small mostly perceived dangers toward some tweens.  It seemed like a delightful story for 6th graders.  But as I began to write, the story kept wanting to change.  I was having a conversation with my daughter one evening and explaining to her that one of my side characters kept demanding that he have access to something in the town that would not have had a logical reason to be in the town in the first place but he would not shut up about it.

This got me teased for a week, like my mild case of synesthesia.  Yes, I converse with my characters.  It isn't fair to uproot someone from their own lives and move them about as writers do without spending time getting to know them.  Well, long story short, this side character demanded to be involved in something more substantial than a tween spook story and my heroes and heroines demanded some mystery they could really sink their teeth into.  So as I wrote, the story began to change.

I also had an enormous amount of school work to do during the month of November, which was just bad timing for me.  So my word count began to fall as I had to reshape the town and the events and the personalities to fit what they characters kept doing without my permission.  I came so close, as can be seen by the green calendar on the right of my home page: around 6000 words from finishing on time.

I'm still working on the story, which isn't too far from being done.  However, I still have to go back and do some rewriting on the first parts to adjust them to the new plot.  Overall, my first NaNo experience was fun. I wasn't able to go to any of the local meetups because of school, but I plan to next year.  M y daughter also began the month participating in the young writers' portion of NaNo, but because of school work, she fell behind.  We had a great time doing it, though, and an even better time talking to each other about our writing experiences and sharing our ups and downs.

Now, heavy into editing month, I'm doing my best on that part, too.  But school and the holidays and job hunting come first.  Hopefully I'll finish sometime before next year's NaNoWriMo!

~andrea