National Novel Writing Month



I have decided to do National Novel Writing Month once more. I successfully completed it in 2011 and 2012. The aim of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000 word novel in November. My main reason for doing NaNoWriMo again is to motivate myself. Apart from the actual month, I know from previous years that my writing output is greater in the months after NaNoWriMo.

What Will I Write?


I intend to resurrect one of the novels I started writing during my masters. One is a young adult novel, Branded. I wrote the first two chapters of it for a Writing for Young Adults subject. It is a different take on alien abduction, more about the actual abduction and trying to escape, than the aftermath. The other manuscript is based on a short story I submitted during the course called Me, Arizona and the Spike. The story is about the transition of humanity during the technological singularity.  I started to expand that short story into a novel during a vacation break in my masters, writing the first 10,000 words.

Until I started writing this blog post I was committed to the technology singularity novel. But having just remembered how enthusiastically the lecturer responded to Branded, I am seriously considering returning to it. It does have a lot clearer, at least in my head, journey to travel, than the adult novel. I have no idea where Me, Arizona and the Spike will go, let alone finish.

Critics of NaNoWriMo


NaNoWriMo has its critics. They say it is just about quantity and not quality, which is true, but that is where editing and redrafting comes in. And they say that 50,000 words does not make a novel. The typical adult novel is over 80,000 words. But young adult novels can be around 50,000 words. Another reason to choose to write Branded (but from previous experience it will probably run well over 100,000 words).

The novel I started in the 2011 NaNoWriMo ended up at over 200,000 words. One of my NaNoWriMo buddies plans to write a number of short stories and articles for his 50,000 words. So there is no need to be pedantic about writing a 50,000 word novel.

Many NaNoWriMo Novels Published


I was curious how many works from NaNoWriMo writers have been published. On the NaNoWriMo site there is a list of over two hundred authors whose NaNo novel found a traditional publisher. So it can be done. One of those authors is Hugh Howey, who wrote some of his phenomenally successful novel Wool one November.

As I finish this post, I am drifting towards writing the young adult novel. If I choose it, I might actually finish the first draft of a novel in November. That would be fantastic. It also has the advantage of being fantasy/science fiction so will involve little research as I can invent much of the world it is set in. I have found in previous NaNoWriMos that research can get in the way of writing 1666 words a day. But if that research is skipped it leads to doubts over potential plot holes.

You can join me by becoming my buddy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Jonathan Franzen's Purity.

Image
Although this blog is mainly about science fiction, I sometimes read pure literature just to see what the other side is up. Jonathon Franzen is one of my favourite non-genre authors and here is a review of Purity, which I just finished reading.   Purity is literature with a plot. The plot revolves around secrets with the two main secrets being Purity’s search for the identity of her father, and the cover-up of a murder. The novel follows four main characters: Purity, Andreas Wolf, Tom and Leila. Purity is a recent university graduate in search of journalism job. She was raised by a controlling, but loving, mother who always got her own way and would argue for hours about the most trivial matters. Andreas Wolf is modelled on Julian Assange, complete with his own version of Wikileaks. Wolf was raised in East Germany and was a reluctant escapee when the wall came down as East Germany was a seemingly perfect place to keep his secrets. Tom is the owner and editor of an invest...
Read more

Review of The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, by Richard Flanagan

Image
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is about a dying mother, Francie, and the efforts of her adult children to keep her alive, even though she wants to die. The children have lost the ability to communicate with each other, and are out to show they have the power, at least in the case of Anna and Terzo, to keep their mother alive. While Tommy, a failed artist who was looking after Francie, just acquiesces to the will of his other two siblings.  The novel is also about our dying planet, particularly from climate change, as animals go extinct We say we care, but do little to prevent the unfolding disaster. The novel is set in Tasmania while bushfires rage throughout that state and the rest of Australia.  Anna is the main protaganist, a successful architect, who rather than face her mother's pain, her crap relationship with her son, or the raging climate around her, retreats into social media. Frequently forwarding articles she has not read to her friends, showing how she avoids taki...
Read more

New Blog Look.

I have just updated the look of my blog. I am trying to create a consistent web presence online by ensuring that my blog, website and social media look the same and are connected.  This desire for a consistent web presence is a result of what I have learnt in my studies for a Bachelor or Arts (Internet Communications). I have just completed the first two subjects. One of the subjects, Web Communications, had us creating a new web presence, so I created a new blog on Wix, a new Facebook page, a new Twitter account, and joined Wattpad for the first time. As part of the assignment we were supposed to consistently style all the sites. The central node is here . The other subject was an Introduction to Internet Design. In that subject we had to create, from html and CSS code, a website. I choose to do one for author Graham Clements. For that website, I pretended that I had published four novels that are in reality only unpublished, and in need of redrafting, manuscripts. I am quite ...
Read more