I just read about a girl who is just 2 years older than me and who wrote 1,000,000 words in November. Yes, you read that right, one million words in thirty days. That's roughly 33k+ per day. Kateness, I know you will never read this, but you are my hero.
As for me, I didn't do anywhere near as well. I worked on my planned novel for about 28k and one week before I decided that I hated the characters, didn't like where the plot was heading, and didn't like the fact that while it was a little bit of a fantasy, it was mostly a relationship drama. And I hate relationship drama's unless it's a sideplot underneath an adventure. So I stopped working on that and started on a new novel idea that I had, about a bookseller who gets involved with a murder mystery.
I loved the main character, Jaz Parker, who was smart, funny, and a little bit eccentric, I thought the romantic interest, Samuel, was interesting and had a few quirks of his own that I would have loved to explore, but the story was boring. It was just a straight mystery with no sign of magic or gadgets anywhere.
So I just stopped writing altogether. I was way ahead of schedule, and I figured some time off would help me get my mind back in the game.
But when I started falling behind, I had to start writing something and there was nothing to write. So I wrote stories based on my *really* good dreams that I had been having all month. And I loved them. I wrote up three of them, and each one was a little bit different. One was about an immortal and her lover who were stuck pretending they were just friends while they were working for a monster hunting company. I had some trouble with the last part of that one, because it took a turn for the worse plot wise, and I really didn't like where it was heading. But the beginning is really good. The relationship between the woman and her man was interesting, and how she handled the seperation was heartbreaking.
The next one I wrote was about a woman on vacation with her african american (that part was very important) boyfriend. It was the shortest of the three, and I never actually finished everything I had dreamed about. But it was good, I really liked the boyfriend, and will probably return to this one some day.
The third one I wrote was a lot on the sad, depressing side about a woman who had been kidnapped and thought dead returning to find that her fiance had moved on and got married to someone else. It was heartbreaking and I felt really, really bad for the woman.
I had two other dreams I really enjoyed and wanted to write, but I got bored again and wanted to move on to something else. So I opened a new Word document and just started writing. What came out was a bit of a pleasant surprise. It was about a woman who was a demon/alien/ghost hunter (it's not really clear what she hunts) for hire who has purple energy and her disposal as well as a gun and a sword. There was also a man who was just like her who had been her lover for more than three thousand years before disappearing for a thousand and had just barely returned a few weeks ago, only his energy was a bright gold color. They didn't get along very well because she was angry that he had left, and angry that he had returned because she had eventually gotten over him and was now engaged to a mortal. He had returned to bring her back to their homeland, which is actually underground, because there was a Bringer of destruction coming, etc. It was really interesting, and I think I might do something with that as well.
But I, again, got bored, and couldn't find anything to write. I stayed behind schedule and had to write about 15k on the 30th. That was not fun. I picked random words out of the dictionary and began writing the first thing that came to mind, but I still struggled to make it. I did make it, thank goodness, but I didn't get the same sense of satisfaction I had gotten last year.
After some careful thought of what I had done wrong, I figured out that it was because I was working on all new stuff. Huntress worked last year because the basic idea had been fermenting in the back of my mind for several years. The first novel I tried during November didn't work because it was something I had thought up a few days before the month had started.
I am now kicking myself in the pants for not writing what I had decided on writing back in August. That was a story that had been in my brain for a few years, and I'm sure that it would have pulled me through the entire month.
Oh well, what's done is done.
I'm going to say, though, I'm thinking of doing JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month) or any of the other programs during different months. There are a lot. Not one for every month, but a lot. And since I won't have INSANELY long papers to write and an Oral report to work on during nect semester or the summer, then I will have much more time on my hands. I will have a job by then, but I did NaNo while I was working full time in 2008, so it's definitely possible.
And now I will stop rambling. I really have to post more often so I don't get these overly long posts...
