November, November…

It’s that time of year again when the words start to flow and a novel is written. National Novel Writing Month has formed a huge part of my lift for the last 10 years – this year brings me into year 11 of participating in this crazy train of novel writing. I was hesitant about whether I was going to participate this year, for no reason other than I am not sure what sort of time I can realistically dedicate to writing the novel.

I started writing today, and you know what? I know it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get to the end of the 50,000, but I am going to give it a shot.

I also plan to try and write a blog entry every day as well as part of the National Blog Posting Month – something that I’ve only done a couple of times. They may not be long, or detailed, but it’s something that I would like to try.

I’ve been out of practice of blogging just lately. I write about the books I read, and the knits that I’ve completed, but I’ve definitely scaled back what I’ve been writing about just recently. It will be nice to get into the writing again that’s for sure. This is my main blog – I have another one that I don’t really want to advertise as such, not that I write there much either. Writing is cathartic, and helps get things in order. Now that Facebook doesn’t allow automatic sharing either it means that perhaps I can be a bit more freer in what I write about here? I was sharing to Facebook to share my knits, but it also meant that I wrote less freely about the things that perhaps I would have done prior.

I don’t know. All I know is that I feel the urge to write this November, and perhaps if I don’t complete one challenge, then hopefully I will be able to complete the other.

I end this blog at 1,883/50,000.

Watch this space.

Kialtho

A WriMo Update

A WriMo Update

I had forgotten how much I love taking part in NaNoWriMo. This once a year feat where you and countless other strangers are united in reaching that one all important target of 50,000 words and have the workings of a novel at the end of it. It’s amazing. Seeing other people’s successes makes me want to try even harder to get to my own goal. Last year, as I mentioned in a previous post I didn’t take part, and I think that has made me appreciate it all the more this year.

I now have the vague workings of a plot; haunted hospital, psychic girl, weird stuff going on. It hasn’t moved along in a pace that I would have liked; my original plan had a different overlay in telling the story – but that’s okay. It’s all about where the characters take you, you can’t force them to be something that they are not.

Something that does concern me about my novel though is that at the moment it all feels very one dimensional. The characters, the plot. But I think this is caused more because I haven’t planned things out. I didn’t know what I was going to write about until November 1^st. This is the joy of writing a first draft though. You can see what works and what doesn’t and the joy of not planning a novel also means that you don’t necessarily know how it’s going to end.

I am pleased with my progress so far. It’s only day four, which means the target is 666,7. I have spent last few hours working on my novel, and have breached the 10,000 word barrier. For me this is usually the first hurdle. Working towards double figures sometimes feels like a never ending uphill struggle, but once you hit that target it feels like that first weight is lifted and that you have made progress. The same comparison can be made when knitting; those first few rows feel like it will take forever to make progress, but suddenly you’re there and you know that it is going well.

So I have a fifth of my novel complete. My boyfriend suggested that I aim for 100k but one of the reasons that I have surged ahead and used my time effectively today is because the next week or so are going to be really busy and I’m not sure how much time I will be able to spend writing. I plan to make the time available but work will typically get in the way, no matter how hard I try.

I finished reading my book a couple of days ago as well, so a blog about that will be on its way shortly. And I’ve nearly finished my current knitting project so a blog about that will be on its way as well, then the rest of the time will be dedicated to writing as much as possible.

That’s all for now folks,

Kialtho

10,107/50,000