Monday 1 November 2010

NaNoWriMo - Day 1


So I'm tackling NaNoWriMo this year! I signed up last year with the best of intentions, but then life got in the way and I never ended up writing a single word. This year is going better, already.

I didn't have as much time to outline my novel as I would have liked, but this particular story is one I've been mulling over for a few years now. I managed to put a rough outline together, and I took time to revamp a couple of the characters. I also dropped the original setting (a real town) and am creating a fictitious town in a slightly different location, based loosely on the real town but with a history I've cobbled together from real and imagined events.

I am not nearly finished with my outlining, but was able to go ahead with my first day of writing anyway. As you can see from the neat graphic above, I wrote 1915 words today, which means one successful day and also one day in which I surpassed my goal of 1667 words.

I am building the outline in layers, loosely following Randy Ingermanson's snowflake method. I like the way one layer of work builds upon the previous layer, and then contributes to the next one.

For those who are interested in the technical mechanics of writing (the act of recording the words, not the composition itself) I'm using a book writing template produced for OpenOffice. I had originally considered getting software made for writing fiction, but so far this seems quite adequate and it's also free! I've tweaked the template styles slightly, and added extra details into the sections for characters, settings and items. I also added a to do list at the very beginning.

It was a good day, but I'm not done yet. I'm off to work on some of those details that need filling in, and then it's supper with the family.

If you're doing NaNoWriMo and want to add me as a writing buddy, you can find me at ruby3881. Happy novel writing!

1 comment:

Suz Alicie said...

That is an excellent start for NaNo, I don't know a lot about the mechanics or even the styles or methods. I have a story in my head, I jot down a simple outline then as I write I let the characters tell their own story. I've never written a whole novel, just several short stories, NaNo is a challenge I have chickened out of for the past two years. This year I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. As soon as the NaNo site is back up I'll buddy you!