I was hoping to be able to do NaNo this year, although I have to admit I was also pretty apprehensive. It’s been a weird-ass year and I’ve found it very difficult to write much at all, but I figured maybe I just need to force it out for a month.
Well, work put a stop to that idea anyway. I’ve been asked to re-write the practical course I usually run for the A level biology independent candidates so that it’s more covid-safe. That’s going to take up a huge chunk of the first 2 weeks of November, and I’m sure there’ll be extras added afterwards to take up the second half of the month.
Usually I can make it work. I’ve actually run the practical courses while also completing NaNo in the past! But I think my mojo was a little more co-operative than it is now, and I don’t want to push it. Instead I’m going to try to stick to 200 words a day minimum, so while it might still mean forcing it out, it shouldn’t be too much like pulling teeth!
I’ll be cheering on all the other NaNo-ites from the sidelines!
I’ve finished and sent off my edits for Not Broken and now I think October should be a kind month. A self-care month! A month where I don’t berate myself for my pitiful word count.
I’m currently uploading Zero Degrees one chapter per week, and I’m planning to do a master post on tumblr to link to all the chapters there, because yeah… tumblr. Other than that I’m hoping to slowly ease myself into writing The Willing and a bit of fanfic. Work’s quite busy, though, and NaNo’s just around the corner, so I’m not going to be too worried if I don’t get around to it!
I nearly got there! But it was like pulling teeth!
For the first time, I started a NaNo I couldn’t finish! Usually I have no trouble getting over the word count, but this time it just didn’t happen.
Because it was camp NaNo I set my own target. 35k is just over half of my usual aim for a month, but I fell short by 10k.
Thing is I could probably have forced it? I would probably have hated it though, and what’s the point in that? And on the plus side I now have 25k more of the Willing than I had before. And in the long run, that’s a pretty good win.
I had an upsetting moment this week where I thought that I was going to have to change all 27 thousand words of The Willing to come from Kitty’s point of view instead of Talia’s! Again!!
The Willing has gone through an infuriating number of changes since I finished the first handwritten draft. I always expect to change genders, names and backstories to a certain extent, but I’ve re-written this story at least five times now.
First I realised that there was a major plot point that just did NOT make sense and made one of the characters quite unlikeable, so I had to revisit a load of characters’ motivations. I then discussed the structure with Aloïs quite a bit and they suggested that Kitty’s character isn’t dynamic enough to be the main character, whereas Talia, who dies and comes back to life, definitely has a fish-out-of-water appeal. Initially I started writing BOTH girls’ points of view in the past tense, but then allowed myself to be talked into writing in present tense, which is a bit out of my comfort zone. I’m glad I did, because it just gives it an immediacy that suits the story. Which then made me think keeping the POV limited to just one person would be better. Soooo I ended up with the third draft!
The trouble is, Talia’s story may be more interesting at the start, but the end of the story is all Kitty’s. She’s the one who has to face a possible conspiracy and her own tragic past. Talia has to tackle her abandonment issues and learn to open up, and that’s important, but it just feels silly to have this entire magic system seen only from the outside, and not through Kitty’s eyes.
It soon became clear that I was going to have to go back to an older draft, but I’ve really become attached to first person present. My problem was that I wasn’t sure how ‘acceptable’ it would be to write alternating POVs in first person! I know that such things are very reliant on fashion – it used to be really common to have books written in third person omniscient in the early 20th century, while now I just can’t imagine that working – the POV jumps around too much, even within a paragraph.
I’m happy to say that my friends on a writing discord group make excellent cheerleaders, and encouraged me to write it the way I wanted (different chapters alternating POVs, both in first person present) as long as I make it clear who’s thinking. I recently wrote a Cyrano fic (pretentious? Me? Never!) with alternating POVs in the first person, and I’m actually more proud of that piece of writing than anything else I’ve done recently.
As Tay told me, “Don’t limit yourself because of ‘shoulds’ and ‘can’ts'”. So I’m going to be brave! I’m going to write as pretentiously as I like, hell, if middle aged straight white men can do it and be lauded, I’m gonna go for it too!
I’m writing their accents too. That’s even more terrifying…
Lyn Hemphill 