NaNoWriMo 2022 approaches…

NaNoWriMo 2022 official banner

At time of writing this I am 5 days away from beginning NaNoWriMo. For those unfamiliar, the gauntlet is thrown down to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That ends up being 1,666 words a day, with an additional 20 words thrown in at the end. It’s a daunting task for me, I’ll be real. I’m used to writing flash fiction, 500 to 1,000 words condensed down to the absolute minimum required for the story to make sense. The idea of sitting down and writing and just not stopping. Not stopping to fix dumb little mistakes. Not turning around half way and deleting everything I've written out of frustration. Not giving up when I hit a creative wall. It’s daunting.

I have prepared, however. I have an outline, I’ve developed the cast, I’ve got the plot squared away to a point where I think it will work. The feelings of inadequacy haven’t hit yet. I’m daunted yet optimistic at this point. Thankfully I have two friends that will be doing this too and I’m very excited to see what their stories entail. It’s also great to have people that I know to do this with, we can cheer each other on, share tips, or cry openly to each other that our fingers, soft from a lack of manual labour, are sore and aching.

What’s my story about? I hear you not ask but I’m going to tell you anyway because I want to get the thoughts in my head down.

My story is about a girl named Isobel in a secondary fantasy world. She’s a ‘legitimate’ thief who breaks into businesses to prove that it can be done easily, and said businesses should therefore pay protection money. She becomes aware of a collection of jewels that enter the city and decides to take back from the merchant class who own every business in the city and are forcing her adoptive parents out of their farmhouse. Like any good heist, it involves a crew, and a plan. And like any bad heist, it’s likely to go wrong.

This story has been swimming around in my mind in one way or another for years, and I believe that NaNoWriMo and my friends participating is giving me the strength and motivation I need to actually put it down in writing. Will it be any good? Probably not, it’s my first novel. My goal is to write the damned thing, and have a friend read it. 2nd draft to fix those big glaring issues that make the story not work. Then have it critiqued once more for a 2nd revision. The 2nd revision I’ll go through with a comb for inconsistencies and smaller issues. Then kick it back out for review. From there on in, who knows. If I feel it’s any good I’ll send it out for a query. But more than likely it’ll be an excellent first attempt at learning how to write a book, and I'll put it away on a shelf and look back on it fondly.

That’s the plan, anyway.

I’ve been writing for 20 minutes now, and that is 526 words. At that pace I could hit 1,666 words in just over an hour. So that’s good news, but can I keep that up? We’ll find out soon.