Looking In

Well. As of today, officially, I’ve ‘won’ my NaNoWriMo challenge. Ending with a total of 50775 words. Honestly, I never thought I’d finish. When I first signed up for this back two days before it began in October, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.?

I had Beckett MOG articles due, I was a guide for EQ2 (notice I said ‘was’ for that one), I was taking on guiding on another game, I had real life and all of its glory, Nostalgia, Friends, Family, Christmas. Lots of reasons why this would be a BAD idea to start. I gave it some thought though. If so many other people could do it, why couldn’t I.?

I knew from the beginning I would need motivation, so when I heard about the charity The Office of Letters and Light, I set up a page where people could donate, thinking that this would help me in motivation. Wow was I right. I set a goal of $200 for myself. I never expected to reach it though. Nor did I expect the people who donated to donate. With the help of some fantastic friends, I managed to raise $250. Every time I didn’t want to write, I reminded myself that all of these people believed in me, and that I could not let them down.?

I tried to set aside specific times of the day to write. I learned a few things. Number one. I hate schedules. I’d much rather just do things when I want to do them – the problem comes though when I don’t want to do them. Writing 50,000 words in one month was easy for some, they practically did it in their sleep (or on raids!) but for me, it was hard.?

I did not have a story at all going into this. I didn’t even have an idea. In fact until the 2nd day I had not the faintest clue what I was going to write. I didn’t know if it was going to be a fantasy setting or modern or who the main characters were. I sat down and wrote. By the end of the first week I had a vague idea of where I wanted things to be, and by the end of the second week I’d fleshed the idea out in my head. The folks at NaNoWriMo were amazing. They email you inspiring messages and the forums are great. Meeting other local NaNoWriMo’s was also a nice ability. A lot of talented people here.?

I have never written a story this long before. I realize it’s nothing by ‘novel’ standards, but when the longest story you’ve ever written is only a few pages, and it’s been literally years since you’ve written anything of significance, well. You deserve a little pat on the back.?

I’ll be posting the story public for people to read online, a chapter at a time. I’ll probably start next week. I do want to go over the story a little bit first before I do this and shape it up a little. Why? NaNoWriMo encourages people to NOT edit their works until December when the challenge is over. They encourage you to just ‘go with the flow’. They tell you that even if a characters name changes 20 times during the story, to just leave it be for the month of November. Don’t revisit and revise. That’s exactly how I wrote. So basically for the month of November I kept the story in my mind and then as soon as I made my personal word count for that day I promptly forgot what I wrote. Which means because I’m so horrible with names, my names DO change throughout the story. One minute the main character is named one thing, and the next it’s something else. Before I go posting that for people to read I want to fix it.?

I’ll make a few more posts before I put the story online, but again I just want to thank everyone for their motivation and inspiration. You guys are simply amazing and I’m lucky.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 7:42 am and is filed under NaNoWriMo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.