NaNoWriMo 2010: The Wrap-Up

And so ends NaNoWriMo 2010.

Well, okay, technically as of the time of this post I have over four hours left before the deadline has officially passed. But anyway, I finished my novel. Or rather, that is, I finished the first draft... but the revisions can wait a bit.

Final word count: 103,429. Which is somewhat over what I had hoped, but probably still manageable. I've already mentioned I'm chopping off the entire first chapter, which will cut the word count by a little over two thousand, and while there are a few details I do plan to add in the revisions, the pruning of my first-draft verbosity will almost surely mean significantly more words lost than gained even aside from that amputated first chapter. So I'm fairly confident that my final draft will come in under 100,000 words. Not a short novel, but not excessively long; according to various sources I've looked at online, the best word count for a fantasy novel for a first time author seems to be between 90,000 to 100,000 words or so, and the final draft of Ichor should fall comfortably in that range. (And definitely a far more reasonable word count than the ponderous 170,000+ words of my previous novel, which with every passing day I am increasingly unsurprised that I was unable to find an agent for.)

Although I'd had the ending planned out in considerable detail from the beginning (which is the way I usually like to work; it's paid off for me at 24-Hour Comics Day, too), the manner in which the main story ended almost necessitated a bit of an epilogue, to tie things up neatly. And I had no idea till today what that epilogue was going to entail. What it did end up entailing I definitely hadn't planned ahead of time, involving two characters getting together in a relationship that I hadn't previously foreseen getting together at all. But hey, it worked. And I'm fairly happy with how it all turned out.

So, with the first draft finished, I now have the second draft to worry about. And the third. And... well, however many it takes till I feel comfortable calling it done.

But not today. And not tomorrow, either. I'll worry about those later.

For the moment... I think I can afford to take a bit of a break.

NaNoWriMo 2010, Week Four

All right, I'm rather late with this post; week four of NaNoWriMo ended almost 24 hours ago. A variety of factors conspired against my making this post earlier, however, including a job interview and a gastrointestinal disorder. In any case, though, despite some factors that impinged on my time and prevented me from making this post in a timely manner, week four of NaNoWriMo actually went pretty well.

In particular, for the first time since the beginning of Week Two, I actually got back on track to finish 100,000 words by the end of the month. Oh, the middle days of the week were unspectacular. I had a good start, with 5,444 words on Monday, but then Tuesday I added only 2,432 words, and Wednesday, with 661 words, was even worse. I was afraid the next few days might be difficult, with Thanksgiving weekend coming; family was visiting from out of town, and I wasn't sure how much time I'd find for my writing. But as it happened, Thursday I started picking up the pace again and got to 3,107 words, and then Friday I broke 5,000 words, Saturday I had my second best day ever with 6,552, and yesterday I did slightly worse, with 5,479, but still enough to at last put me back where I should be. (To reach 100,000 words by the end of the month, I should have been at at least 93,333 words by that day; I was at 95,154.)

Now, mind you, it's still going to be a bit of a challenge finishing the novel, mainly because it's looking like the first draft may be somewhat more than 100,000 words... I'm near the end of the story, but I'm not sure I'm that near the end. But we'll see what the next two days bring...

In any case, another thing I've found interesting about the writing process of this novel is the way some minor characters unexpectedly took center stage. That's happened before in another novel I started a while back (and have yet to finish), The Demon of Cyrano Station, in which two members of the command crew of the titular space station, the security chief and the head of publicity, both of whom I expected to be minor background characters, somehow made their way into the spotlight and ended up becoming main characters. In the case of Ichor, the story I'm working on for NaNoWriMo, one of the spotlight-seizing characters has been the captain of the ship. Obviously, the ship had to have a captain; I always knew that character would be there, and I had planned out his appearance, at least. But he ended up becoming a much more important character than I imagined, perhaps having the most "screen time" of any character in the story aside from the protagonist. He also ended up being perhaps the most fun character to write, with the most distinctive speech patterns. (One thing I may work on in the rewrites is to make sure each character, or at least each important character, has more of his own voice, his own characteristic way of speaking, his own oratorical mannerisms. The captain, however, is the one character who in the rough draft already well found his own distinctive voice, and is all the more enjoyable to write for because of it.)

The other character who jumped into the spotlight was even more of a surprise, because I hadn't planned for her at all. In the first week of NaNoWriMo, when I was still, er, wasting some time on the NaNoWriMo forums, I mentioned in a post there that my main character's "sexuality never comes up in the story"—that is to say, the protagonist had no love interest in the story, or anyone he even showed particular interest in. Well, as I was writing Chapter 10, though, a love interest sort of naturally developed, and I saw some good possibilities it could bring to the story, so I went with it. Since I hadn't originally planned on any such thing, though, I hadn't designed a character to fill that role, so I pretty much just picked a name from a list of crewmen who had been mentioned before but I hadn't done anything with. This character who came into the story pretty much on the fly then ended up playing a very significant role, and likewise accumulating a lot of "screen time" (though not as much as the captain). Of course, one thing I'll have to do in the rewrites is maybe give her a couple of notable appearances earlier so she doesn't seem to come out of nowhere in Chapter 10, but still, the way she developed was completely unexpected.

So. Anyway. I'm on the home stretch. I've finally reached the point that, in terms of the screenwriters' "three act structure", I'd call Act Three. (I'm not really a big exponent of the "three act structure", in fact I think it's badly overemphasized and often inapplicable, but in this particular case I think Ichor does have a well-defined Act Three, though the line between Act One and Act Two is much fuzzier.) Here's where it all comes together, where all the guns on the mantel get fired, and where things really go off the rails. Now I just need to get it all down in the next two days...

NaNoWriMo 2010, Week Three

And so ends week three of NaNoWriMo, and so I guess it's time for another update as to how I'm doing.

As I mentioned in the last post, as far as NaNoWriMo itself, I've already "won". I'm well past 50,000 words, which is the official goal of NaNoWriMo. But again, my real goal isn't just to "win" NaNoWriMo; it's to finish the novel. So how are things going with that?

As of the end of week two, I was rather seriously behind schedule. I knew I'd really have to kick things up if I wanted to get the projected 100,000 words of my first draft done by the end of the month. Well, as it turns out, I did. I started the week badly, with 2,631 on Monday and 2,196 on Tuesday, well above the 1,667 NaNoWriMo recommends but well below what I'd need for my personal goal. Wednesday I did better, with 3,799 words. Unfortunately, though that would have been fine had I still been on schedule, I was behind enough that that still was below the daily average I'd need to finish on time.

The next day, though, I got 4,949 words, which did exceed what I needed. And while Friday I had a poor day with only 1,779 words, I managed 4,403 words on Saturday, and then yesterday was my best day so far, with 7,669 words. As it currently stands, then, my total so far is 66,464 words; in order to finish 100,000 words before the end of the month, I'll need to complete an average of about 3,726 words a day for the next nine days. I think that should be doable...

Of course, though, the 100,000 words is just a projected estimate anyway. It may end up a little longer, or a little shorter. In fact, it's looking now like it's more likely to end up a little longer... I've still got a lot of plot left to get through, and I don't know that I can fit it all into the 33000-odd words that would leave me. (And to think when I started I was worried I might not have enough story to fill the book, and might need to come up with more subplots!) However, I'm not sure that a first draft of 100,000 words will really lead to a final draft of 80,000 to 90,000 words. Yes, I'm going to cut the entire first chapter, and yes, I'll no doubt be making a lot more cuts along the way and tightening up my prose, but it seems dubious that that's really going to mean a ten to twenty percent reduction in the word count. Particularly since I may need to add a few bits, too, to make sure some things get explained.

Still... well, I guess we'll see where the word count ends up. As long as the final draft turns out anywhere between 85,000 and 100,000 words, I should be okay, really. Much longer or shorter than that, and I'll have to worry.

One thing that's interesting to see as the writing progresses is how undecided plot points tend to work themselves out. Sometimes things come up out of the blue that I hadn't planned on, but that end up seeming natural. The protagonist gets into a conversation with a character that I had thought was fully human, and I suddenly decide to make the character have some demonic ancestry. (Which will involve, when I do the rewrites, a few minor changes earlier in the novel, particularly in his physical description when he's first introduced in Chapter 3—that is, in what is now Chapter 3 but will be Chapter 2 after I delete what is now Chapter 1.)

More to the point, though, it seems to often happen that there are some points in the story I haven't quite made sense of yet that, as I get to them, I see how to resolve using details that had come up in the story that hadn't been part of my original plans. Most recently, I was worried about how the protagonist would solve two particular mysteries. I knew he had to figure out that one character was planting evidence to incriminate another, and I knew he had to figure out that another character was behind some disappearances, but I had no idea how either one would happen. But then it came to me that I had unknowingly laid the groundwork for the revelation in two events that had spontaneously come up as I was writing them, that I could use not only to lead up to the first revelation, but to connect the two revelations to each other and make the story more coherent.

Moreover, there was one character I knew needed a little more time "onscreen" before his demise... he'd only had one big scene so far, really, and he had something going for him, a little project of his own that tied in to some of the themes of the story, that I wanted to reinforce before he was killed off. I hadn't quite decided, though, how I was going to bring him up again. Then there came up a natural opportunity to write a scene involving this character, and I didn't realize till after I'd written the scene that not only had I brought this character in again and had him talk more about his goals as I'd wanted to, but I'd done it in a way that also nicely foreshadowed and resonated with another character's plans that were going to be revealed soon.

That seems to happen all the time in writing. Unknowingly laying groundwork that later seems to be exactly what I need. Were I mystically inclined, I'd say it's because the story is already there, and I'm just discovering it. Romantic as that sounds, though, I don't really believe it. I think it's more that as I write and introduce more details I just end up with more to draw from, so it's natural that some of it ends up being useful... and maybe even because I know where the story has to go, so I'm subconsciously preparing the way, even if I don't consciously realize the full purpose of some of what I write at the time.

Anyway, though, regardless of the reasons, it's nice to see a story that started out as a few somewhat half-baked notes and plans gradually come together into a coherent and well connected whole. Oh, obviously there'll be a lot of revision and editing to do during the rewrites, but even so... even in the first draft the story is turning out a lot more nicely structured than it has any right to be given the sparseness of my outline.

Now to just see if I can bring the thing to an end without going too far over the word count I want...

50K

Well, I just passed 50,000 words on my novel, Ichor. (I'm at 50,117, to be exact... only that's not really exact because, again, it's probably counting some dashes that shouldn't really be counted... still, close enough.) Which means I've now officially "won", as far as NaNoWriMo is concerned. (Well, okay, I guess it won't really be "official" until the word count is verified at the NaNoWriMo site, and the validator won't be active to do that until the 25th... all right, yeah, I'll try to cut down on the parentheticals.) But the novel isn't finished yet, and I wasn't writing it just to "win" at NaNoWriMo, so of course this doesn't mean the end of my writing for the month. In fact, I hope to get at least another thousand words in tonight, though we'll see if that happens.

Actually, if I want to finish the first draft of Ichor by the end of the month (which I do—yeah, that was another parenthetical; sorry), I'm a bit behind schedule. As I said last post, I expect the first draft to be around 100,000 words, which means I really should have hit 50,000 words three days ago. Still, I'm not far behind schedule, and certainly not so far that I can't catch up. (Though, if I don't, it's not a disaster; I can finish in December. I'd much rather finish by the end of this month, though. And dang, I really am addicted to these parentheticals!)

I'm not sure, on reflection, if not having had the entire crew of the ship all planned before I started writing as I had intended to do, along with their exact positions and schedules, is really a wholly bad thing. In some ways, it would have made the writing process smoother, yes, but it might have lessened the flexibility, made it harder to insert on the fly a character I realized I needed for a specific plot point. On the other hand, I could have inserted the character in question, rearranged the crew list accordingly, and made sure in the edits to revise anything necessary before that point to accord with the changes. That would have been a little unwieldy... but more unwieldy than making up the composition of the crew as I went, and trying to keep track of it all? As I said, I'm not sure. Though I'm still leaning toward the opinion that yes, it would have been better to have everything planned out in more detail before I started writing. If I hadn't been intent on starting writing on the first of November for NaNoWriMo, I certainly would have spent more time in planning. Though then there would always be the danger of spending so much time in planning that I never got around to writing... and I'm sure there still would have been new ideas coming up during the writing that I hadn't accounted for in my plans, so there still would have been some changes necessary...

Anyway, whether or not this was the best approach, I think it's safe to say it's working out. Not having planned everything in detail beforehand is going to mean more edits and revisions after the first draft is done to get it all to work together just as I want, but in the long run the novel's not going to suffer for it.

I could say more about my writing process for Ichor, but I've got my NaNoWriMo Week Three post coming up in three days; I think I'll save the rest of my ruminations till then. In any case... I think I'm about halfway there, and pretty close to being on schedule. So far so good...

NaNoWriMo 2010, Week Two

Well. Week two of NaNoWriMo 2010 was not nearly as productive as week one, alas.

Much of this can be blamed on some sort of stomach flu or something I came down with over the last few days, which made it rather difficult to focus on writing, or to get anything else done. Saturday, indeed, marks my all-time low point; I was feeling sufficiently under the weather that I managed to add a grand total of one word. (The word was "Chand". It's a character name. Though one that may change.)

Honestly, though, even before that I wasn't doing so great. Oh, last Monday was fine; I got over 4,500 words—not my best day ever (that would be the previous day, when I broke 6,000), but very respectable. Sadly, however, on only one later day (Wednesday) did I manage even half that, and that just barely. All told, this week I averaged about 2,165 words per day this week... not terrible, I guess, and certainly more than the 1,667 minimum NaNoWriMo officially recommends, but significantly less than the 3,400+ I averaged my first week. And not enough to finish my novel unless I pick up the pace... oh, I'll clear 5,000 words, easy; I'm already nearly 80% there and the month's not quite half over; but I expect the first draft of my novel, Ichor, to be around 100,000 words, and I'll need to do better to reach that. (Yes, I said before I expected the novel to end up around 80,000 to 90,000 words. But, see, I've also come to realize that when I go through and do rewrites and tighten things up, it's probably going to be losing a lot of words—I've already mentioned that I'm cutting the entire first chapter, and I'm sure I'll find plenty of other phrases and passages that I can do without. So I'm expecting the first draft to be significantly longer than the final novel.)

I'm not too worried, though; unless I come down with something else (and possibly even then), I'm pretty sure I'll be able to move things along and get done with my novel in time. However, I'd mentioned in my first post that if I got Ichor done well enough before the end of the month I'd use the rest of the month to write a young adult novel I'd just had the idea for. And it looks pretty certain now that that's not going to happen.

(Okay, if I'm going to be talking about that YA novel, I guess I ought to refer to it by name. But its (tentative) title is rather long, and I don't know that I particularly want to reveal it in full right now anyway, so I'll just refer to it by a partial title, The Emerald Coin.)

But, in several ways, that's just as well. For one, I've been having a hard time plotting out The Emerald Coin anyway. Mostly because I've got Ichor on the mind, and every time I try concentrating on The Emerald Coin, I end up thinking about Ichor instead. Which I suppose is not surprising, given my current absorption in writing Ichor, and maybe it's for the best that I focus on it for now.

Even when I finish Ichor, though, I don't think I want to start The Emerald Coin right away. Thing is, there's another YA novel I'd decided I wanted to write about a year or two ago, tentatively titled Wormhole. But when I had the idea for The Emerald Coin, I decided I wanted to write that first, partly because it was likely to be shorter. On further consideration, however, I think it would be best if I write Wormhole first after all, for several reasons. For one, I have less planning left to do on it. For another, there are some things about The Emerald Coin that may make it a bit of a harder sell, if I don't already have another published credit under my belt. So... still planning on writing a YA novel, just not the same YA novel I was referring to in the first post.

And not still planning on trying to write it before the end of November. That's clearly not going to happen. Ichor I'll write in November. Wormhole... well, I'd say in December, but I'm not sure I can pull that off, even if it is going to be shorter than Ichor. (I'm currently guessing about 75,000 words.) But I'll try to get the first draft done by maybe the end of January. We'll see how that goes.

Which isn't to say, of course, that I'm not going to do any writing in December. I'm going to start Wormhole in December; I'm just not likely to finish it then. Especially since I'm also going to be doing rewrites on Ichor, and trying to get a few short stories done and, I hope, published. So, yeah, I'll be keeping busy. (Not to mention all the non-writing-related stuff I'm also going to be doing, obviously, but that's not what this blog's about.)

Anyway, though, that's next month. For this month, I'm just working on Ichor. And I plan to get a lot more done on it this next week than I did the last...

A Little Off The Top

Well, I haven't been making as much progress on my novel as I'd like. Oh, I'm still on track to have a good chance of finishing it by the end of the month, despite its projected length being well over the 50,000 words prescribed by NaNoWriMo. But I haven't made as much progress as I'd like.

But more on that on Monday. Right now, there's something else I wanted to write about.

At first, if it occurred to me there was something I ought to add or change early on, I'd go ahead and make the change immediately. But as I went on, I've decided that it's probably better to get the whole first draft down first, and then go back and do the edits. So I've been making notes as to what edits are needed, but I'll take care of worrying about the details after the first draft is done.

Which is good as far as my NaNoWriMo wordcount, because one needed edit is going to chop off 2000-odd words.

I've been reading the Evil Editor blog as well as that of the late lamented Miss Snark (well, late in that the blog is no longer updating; at the time of this writing Miss Snark is presumably still alive), and have learned one thing I somehow missed before. Namely, that it's a good idea with a query letter to include the first three to five pages of the manuscript. And I've been considering whether the first three to five pages of my manuscript would really be a good sample, given that they mostly involve the protagonist emerging from a barrel, finding himself in a roomful of barrels, and then finding that there are other people in the room. Exciting? Maybe not. But it was, I thought, necessary, and anyway there were some bits in it—like the opening sentence—that I rather liked.

I've heard the advice before that a writer could try chopping off the first chapter or two of his novel, to begin in the action. A writer friend gave me that advice concerning a novel I'd written previously, without reading the novel or knowing anything about it. (The novel in question was the 170,000-word behemoth I mentioned in my first post.) In that case, as it happened, the advice didn't really fit. That novel already began with a big, attention-grabbing action scene, a scene that moreover introduced a number of important characters that wouldn't appear again until significantly later. (No, it wasn't a prologue, as my friend assumed when I told him this. It did lead directly into the succeeding scenes. The novel did have a prologue, but it was only a few pages long and it wasn't what I was referring to as the beginning of the novel.) Chopping off the first chapter would have deleted a lot of important set-up and left the novel starting with all the drama of the protagonist reading a magazine in bed, and even just chopping off the first few scenes, apart from delaying the introduction of some key characters, would have started the novel at a garden party. That novel, whatever its other flaws, I think was already starting in about the right place. (If one discounts the possibly unnecessary prologue.)

However, while chopping off the first chapter or two isn't one-size-fits-all advice that applies to every novel ever written... in some cases it may actually be a good idea. And I've come around to realizing that the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo novel should probably go. Oh, sure, it's got action in it, as the protagonist tries to evade guards and escape a room. But the action takes a while to get going, and isn't all that thrilling when it does. And there is a bit of somewhat important exposition, but nothing that can't be fit into the next chapter. And yes, there are some lines I'm fond of, such as that aforementioned opening line, that really can't go anywhere else and would have to be sacrificed completely if that chapter were deleted, but... well, I think that sacrifice may be necessary. So, yeah... at this point, I'm intending, when I rewrite the novel (probably in December), to chop the entire first chapter and start with what's now the second, inserting a few lines to patch some necessary details.

Since the first chapter is going to be deleted anyway, I figured I might as well post it below (after the jump), to give you an idea for... well, for what it was going to be, and to give you a taste of the story, albeit a taste that won't make it into the finished version. (Please keep in mind that this is an unedited first draft, not polished prose; the final novel is, of course, going to go through a lot of editing and rewrites before I consider shopping it around.)

NaNoWriMo 2010, Week One

No, I don't plan on making a habit of posting this late at night, but, as this marks exactly the end of the first week of NaNoWriMo, it seemed a good time.

First of all, I suppose it's obligatory in any post about an ongoing NaNoWriMo project to mention the current word count. 23,880 words. Though I think OpenOffice.org is also counting dashes, so the actual word count is slightly lower, but, eh, I don't pepper my writing with so many dashes that the count won't be in the right ballpark.

In fact, what the hey, I've now gone ahead and stuck a widget to show my current word count on the right side of the page. (I'll take it back down after NaNoWriMo.)

So. About my NaNoWriMo story.

A couple months back, I finished reading Moby Dick for the first time. (I'd started it before, but hadn't gotten all the way through; this time I did.) Notwithstanding some troublesome bits like Melville's confident explanations of why whaling didn't really endanger any whale species, overall I enjoyed the book. And it gave me some ideas...

The whaling ship was an interesting setting for a story. A relatively small, self-contained space, with a relatively small, self-contained cast of characters, but nevertheless one that, as evidenced not only by the story of the Pequod in Moby Dick but by the stories told by the crews of other whaling ships the Pequod encountered, lent itself to a broad range of possible story situations. Now... what if I put a bit of a fantasy spin on it? What if instead of whales, the ship was hunting, say... gods?

That was my jumping-off point; I thought that could make for an interesting story. I hadn't even originally been thinking of NaNoWriMo when I came up with the story, but then when I remembered that NaNoWriMo was in fact only a couple of months away, I realized this story would be ideal for that, and I set about trying to flesh out the story in whatever free time I could spare.

While I had taken inspiration from the setting from Moby Dick, I consciously wanted to avoid imitating Moby Dick's plot; I didn't want my story to just be Moby Dick with magic. So I tried to consider what other stories could be told in such a setting, especially with the fantasy elements added. Before I started writing, I hoped to have the main plot fleshed out in some detail, along with a few major subplots I could interweave with it. I also hoped to come up with a complete list of characters, with their physical descriptions, personality traits, and positions on the crew, and the role they played in the story.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I didn't, apparently, make enough time to get everything planned out in as much detail as I wanted. By the dawn of November 1, I did have the main story in mind, and especially the last few chapters plotted out in some detail (all the better to be able to foreshadow them and to hang any necessary Chekhovian rifles). But I only had a vague idea or two for subplots. And as for the characters, I had descriptions and story roles for some of the characters, but only the main character had an actual name.

Still, while I wasn't nearly as prepared as I wanted to be, this was enough to start writing. I could make up and fill in any names I needed as I went. And that's pretty much what I've been doing, although I admit I haven't been altogether happy with most of the names -- but then, coming up with just the right character names is something I tend to obsess about possibly more than I should. And anyway, this can always be fixed later. If I come up with better names while I'm doing rewrites, a little find and replace can put matters to rights.

NaNoWriMo, of course, recommends a goal of at least 1,667 words per day. The problem here, though, is that that assumes you're working on a novel of 50,000 words total. I expect my novel, Ichor, to come out to eighty or ninety thousand words, which means about 3,000 words per day, or more if I hope to finish early enough to have time to write a shorter young adult novel afterward. Still, the first few days I went along at a pretty good clip. I completed 3,640 words the first day, very close to four thousand the next, and 4,252 the day after that.

Then, alas, things slowed down. Thursday the fourth was a busy day, and I didn't get much time to write; I only managed 2,332 words, more than the recommended daily goal but less than my personal goal. Friday I figured I should have plenty of time to make up for it... and I would have, but there I hit a snag. I had reached a point in the story where I really needed to do some setting up for the subplots, and I still didn't have those worked out. So I thought about the subplots, and in the meantime I wrote around what I was missing, skipping ahead a bit to write some parts I wouldn't need the subplots for. Saturday, I was still in much the same situation; I'd had an idea I liked for one subplot, but there was a second subplot I still needed to firm up... I more or less knew what the subplot itself was going to involve, in fact, but didn't know which characters were going to be involved in it, and I needed to know that before continuing. So, again, I skipped around a bit; I filled in some parts that had to do with that first subplot of which I now knew the details, and skipped some bits I'd need to work out the second subplot for. Still, that meant Friday and Saturday were very slow days, with 1,964 and 1,670 words, respectively... again, in both cases above NaNoWriMo's recommended word count goals (though in the latter case just barely), but well below my personal goals.

But then, finally, I managed to get it all worked out. I pretty much know what's going to happen in the subplots now, and who's going to be involved, and I think I've pretty much got the cast list down. So, today, the floodgates opened again, and I managed to get out 6,028 words—the best I've done so far, though I still think I could do better.

So. I'm still definitely on track to finish my fantasy novel by the end of November. Whether I'll also have time to write the young adult novel I have in mind remains to be seen. But I've still got 23 days left to go...

In Principio

So, I have apparently decided to start a blog about my writing.

Why have I decided to do this right now? Well, for several reasons. One is because I've decided to start trying to get serious about writing again. And the second is, of course, because it's NaNoWriMo, which means I really don't have the time for the blog right now, and therefore naturally means I'm going to start one.

I think I'll go into more detail about my NaNoWriMo progress in a separate post; suffice to say for now that I'm more or less on schedule. (That is, I'm on schedule to finish 50,000 words well before the deadline, but perhaps not to finish as many words as I hope to finish.) I've "won" at NaNoWriMo twice before, but with stories that, even with editing and clean-up, weren't publishable, since they were based on copyrighted properties. (Copyrighted by other people, I mean.) I'm not usually interested in writing fanfic, but I figured NaNoWriMo was more a frivolous thing than a time for serious writing. This time, however, I'm working on a story that I think will potentially be publishable when it's through. (And by "when it's through" I mean, of course, after it's gone through several rounds of edits and rewrites; I'm certainly not intending to dash a copy off to an agent on November 30.) We shall see.

Writing isn't new to me. I've loved writing my whole life. As a young child, I would write stories on my parents' typewriter, which had the capability to switch between red and black ink, a capability I used rather more than I should have. I completed two full-length (and in fact rather long) novels as a teenager, though I make no claims that either of them was very good. Another novel later I tried more seriously to shop around to agents, though in retrospect the fact that the damned thing was 170,000 words long was almost certainly rather a turn-off. (Still kind of like it, though, and still think maybe I can do something with it someday... but I'm no longer going to try to sell it as my first novel.)

Those, of course, are just the finished novels. I have any number of other works in progress, and a handful of short stories (which is something I really ought to, and intend to, do more of). As I said, I've always loved to write.

But then for a few years... well, I really didn't do much of it. (I love to write... but there are other things I also love to do.) Oh, I wrote, just not much fiction, and I didn't make any serious efforts to publish anything. It's time to change that. It's time to get back into the game. And this time, I'm really going to take it seriously.

My favorite genres to write are fantasy and science-fiction, though I'm not averse to dabbling in other waters. I've also had some ideas lately for some young adult books I'd like to write, though I'd use a different pseudonym for that. (Not that the pen name is something I really ought to be worrying about until I've got the publishing deal.) But for right now, my immediate writing plans are as follows:

1. For NaNoWriMo, finish the novel I'm working on, a fantasy story called Ichor. (Which I anticipate to be about 90,000 words or so... no more 170,000 word monsters for me just yet.)
2. If I get done with my novel well before the end of NaNoWriMo (which is looking quite possible, though not inevitable), spend the rest of NaNoWriMo working on another novel, a young adult novel I just had the idea for a few days ago which I expect should maybe be 40,000 or 50,000 words (but we'll see).
3. After NaNoWriMo, start with the edits and rewrites. In the meantime, write some short stories (including finishing a number of short stories I've started but haven't completed) and shop them around.
4. When I've gone through enough edits and rewrites to feel comfortable about the condition the novel is in, start querying agents.

So... there's the gameplan. We'll see how it goes...

And now... well, there's another reason I probably shouldn't really have started this blog right now, that being that it's past one in the morning. I thought it was even later than that, actually... did Daylight Saving Time just end? (*Checks the web.*) Huh, so it did. I never remember when that is. Good thing my computer updates automatically. Well, anyway, the point is, it's very late, and I ought to be getting to bed, so I can get up and write a few more thousand words of my novel tomorrow.

Good night.