... This ended up being slightly long
So, two years ago, after I posted a 'The fics I wrote in '07' meme, where I'd written something like 46k in one year, I was feeling really pleased with myself. Then lucathia_rykatu told me about NaNoWriMo and people being able to do that in a month. My jaw dropped at the screen, thinking 'people can do that?? They have to be super fast typers and spend every single waking moment writing!'
Now, two years later, I won NaNo, omg. With a good margin too. I thought I would have been doing good if I reached 20k before I started NaNo, and I finished the month with 59k.
I spent over a month planning it, reading loads of books on writing, and I think the one that's helped and influenced mine the most is The Fire in Fiction, by Donald Maass. That book's the reason why I can have random weather changes, the motivations of certain characters are the way they are, why Kendal's team is like the way they are (not to mention, exist) among other things.
There are also three other things that have influenced this novel a lot:
• the moreau series by S. Andrew Swann (a sci-fi novel series where there are genetically engineered animals and humans around in the world, where the genetically engineered animals were used for war, before they were kicked out),
• Noblesse (a Korean webcomic about a vampire waking up in modern day Korea, being befriended by some kids, and the stuff that happens after)
• and ½ Prince (a manhua about a girl playing an MMORPG deciding to play Second Life as a guy because of a bet she made with her brother. Hilarity ensues when she tries to keep this fact hidden).
All pretty different from each other. XD
The moreau series affected my novel in a fairly obvious way, making me think about outsiders and how they would operate outside of human contact. Which was why I threw out there being Other communities, partially because I didn't think there'd actually be enough Others to make a community in a city, and then I started to make my head hurt trying to work out if there were Others who had jobs in the shops and why would humans employ them etc. So I scrapped that idea, and had Marland live by himself in a flat. X3
Noblesse influenced me in showing me just how much fun it is to set things up and subvert the expectations of the readers. So I tried to make sure that I did that a lot, to keep people guessing.
½ Prince influenced me by making me realise just how much stuff continued to move throughout it. Yeah, I know, it's not exactly new, but after writing so much fanfic for it and trying to place timelines, it's the one to make me properly realise this about there's always something happening and conflict, conflict, conflict. :3
So, thus far, I have something like just below seventy pages of notes of worldbuiling and characters etc. in my notebook (this does not include the writing I did while away from the computer, or my daily notes about each part - then it's 138 pages o_____o;;;). Some of them are redundant because they were for previous drafts of Searching/Through New Eyes but still. I have tiny handwriting, and a fair bit of the time, I was also writing in the margins.
When I started writing NaNo, I cut myself off from all mostly all of my regular distracters, like mangafox and animé and whatever, because I thought I just Would Not have the time for them. After the second day I started reading the webcomics again (not Noblesse though), because, well, they were short enough to not hook me in like other stuff could and Detective Conan, because the chapters were short and I knew where to read them directly without seeing what other manga had updated.
The start of my NaNo is riddled with typos and errors because I thought having those were like a badge of honour in your text, going 'look! I'm doing Nano! See my mistakes!' *facepalm* I learned later that yes, I could have time to check spelling and go back to correct typos. Obviously, I haven't caught all of them, but the later parts are better than the earlier parts at least.
I was surprised on my first day that I was actually able to write 2,700 words. I mean, really? Unless I've gotten obsessed again, I think it's a good day where I write five-hundred. Which was when I slipped on the second day and only got 1,900 words. I hadn't really had a routine and then I was blowing it off going 'eeeeeh, I was able to do it yesterday, so I can do it today easily'. The receptionist volunteering helped so much with my word count, because on some days, I'd have like, three hours of nothing else to do. XDD So I'm stuck in a place by myself where I can't go to the internet, or get something to eat, and all I've got in front of me is a notebook. Most of the time I wrote, other times I drew.
This is what my word count widget looked like at the end of the month:
Apart from two days, I hit the word count every day, until I'd passed the 50k. :3 The one on the first Thursday doesn't count, because that was the site going down at the wrong time. So my highest word count of the month was 3,245, and my lowest was 325. My average word count was around 2k. :)
Another thing that surprised me was the amount of drawing that I did because of writing. It's been years since I've drawn even a doodle, and then suddenly I'm doing fairly okay, decent sketches alongside writing more than 1,667 words per day. Okay, fine, yeah, that was also me procrastinating, but it was still stuff for the novel, so that counts, right? :P
I did have a couple of worries about the novel, like, 'is there enough conflict?' and 'am I going to hit the word count?' I was worried about the first part, because I thought the novel was going to end up like Twilight, where not much happened for the first part, and then stuff began happening in the second part. It kind of depends on how you interpret 'stuff happening' though, because stuff did happen, but just not that plot-related. Was just setting stuff up for it. And now I'm going to hit an info-dump of doom really, really soon. >____> Fun. We'll see how that pans out.
As for the 'am I going to hit the word count?' worry… Haha. Ahahaha~ Yeah, I figured after I hit 10k and was only three pages in to my plot-thing that I'd be fiiiine. I'm 59k words in now, and I still have a fair bit to go. So not 70k, but maybe more 80k? Yeah, should be. The very ending will suck so badly, and I don't want to write the second epilogue anymore, because it leaves so much hanging. Yeah, it's already there, but I don't want to make it so bloody explicit! Some sort of closure is needed!
The stuff that I learned from NaNo:
• Yes, I can write an average of two-thousand words a day.
• I spend so much time procrastinating on the internet.
• It's a whole lot better to just have the words down on a page - you can edit that to beautiful prose later, but only if you actually have words to edit in the first place.
• I can actually write fairly decently while writing loads. XD; What does it say about my writing when I think my text from NaNo isn't actually that different from my usual writing, barring a couple of typos and starting every paragraph with a noun? Well, that's at the moment - let's see what I think at the end of the year. (omg, that meme's going to take hours to do!)
• My best time for writing is very early in the morning. I spent last month mostly running an hour ahead, so that I could wake up at half-four and finish writing my daily word count by about seven. XD
• Don't push myself too hard for the word count. If I've hit it, good. If I've surpassed it by a big margin, even better. Just don't keep pushing myself when I've already written so much and haven't done that much else that day. That's the best thing to do to burn myself out and wane interest. =/ Not to mention, I can then justify a low word count the next day by saying, 'Well, I wrote loads yesterday, so that'll even out', except that could have then carried on to the day after that as well.
• Do not go on to the forums after NaNo has started. For a start, it's a good place for procrastination. For another, you can then see other people's progress. After the first day, I saw one person with an over twenty-thousand word count, and another with over seventy. I ran quickly after that.
• I learned about how you're supposed to bandage stuff and that you're, you know, supposed to clean it well and dry it beforehand. Also, I now know the basics how you're supposed to bandage a shoulder and a foot now. ^____^
• I will admit, that I relearned the seasonal months because of this. .____. I had thought that winter was like, October through to March or something. My reasoning was that it got cold during then, and cold = winter, right? I hadn't put much thought in to what the months were for spring or autumn, and summer was May, to about July.
• I learned to keep a timeline for Searching. I didn't realise how much I would be monitoring the time during this. O____o I needed to, to know when it was okay for Marland to go to sleep, and maybe it if was time to change the bandages. Not to mention to know their poor, screwed up sleeping habits.
• I also learned that you sort of need to have breaks in the narrative, where you don't know what the characters are doing, or else you have to make sure you put in the daily necessities, like showering. Or going to the toilet. Marland has a seriously good bladder. :P
• I do use a lot of writing shortcuts when I write fanfic. I was attempting to go for a serious bit of writing for this, but I noticed that I'd sometimes slip. After that, I didn't mind/bother so much.
• I hadn't realised how truly boring Through New Eyes was going to be. No wonder I dropped it after writing the first chapter. All I had for that was Alex lost his memory, got dumped in to a different world where there were four other races apart from human, and he eventually gets picked up by Richard, who's curious about how Alex does magic when he wasn't taught it. They pick up mini-dragon along the way. …And that was basically it. :P
• I can write 240-250 words in ten minutes. I used to think that 190 was pretty much my upper limit on Write or Die.
• I didn't realise I loved animalistic/instinctual characters so much. I knew I loved watching them and squeeing over them, but writing them? I don't think I'd explored that in so much depth before.
• Never use a common word to name something when you know you're going to use it a lot. SERIOUSLY. I'm making up a word the next time because Others? What was I thinking?! Okay, fine, I was thinking that the humans were being all sneery and not thinking and just going 'okay, they're from another world, they're other than human, so we'll call them Others! Right, next thing on the agenda: how do we get rid of them?' Don't be so logical next time!
• How fast it takes us for our eyes to adjust to sudden darkness. Yeah, not that long.
• The sunset times during summer.
• Geckos! Like the signs of when they're about to shed their skin and problem areas. … Noooo, I wasn't thinking about having Marland shed. *innocent eyes*
• I still can't describe people well, but I can blame that on Marland not paying that much attention. Right?
What was easy to do:
• Following the not-plot. Some parts got moved around, but it's still essentially the same thing.
• The fight scenes! When they were there! XDD
• Doing Marland's mannerisms. X3
What was hard:
• Not giving away spoilers, like about the picture of Shodin and Saisha I drew. XDD;
• Getting the words if I was stuck or had slept in.
• Conversations. Especially after I'd had the characters say the important bits and I needed to get rid of them so that the conversation wouldn't start dragging. *glares at Pai* It was a lot easier to do when Marland (and Shodin) were outside, because they could walk away easily, or Kendal needed to go eat, or Laris and Nav had work to do. Not to mention, their conversations weren't as scripted, weren't as important as others, so they did what they wanted to do anyway. XD
• After finding out about Tegami Bachi, to stop reading/watching and getting back to my word count. XDD
• Knowing what to do when the [days pass] stuff came up. XD;; I got sooo stuck in some parts. Eventually, I started skipping them, because Marland and Shodin had gotten past the awkward initial trusting stage and nothing else important was happening during then.
• Keeping Shodin's speech pattern consistent. XD;; I lost it somewhere in the teens I think, and it's faded now, but at least that's because he's been stealing stuff from the TV.
• Not knowing quite how Marland's magic works. I still don't. XDD
• Not throwing out the plot and characterisations, and then throwing Marland and Shodin together, flailing at them, and telling them to go be happy and cute together. IC!Marland is just staring at me in horror at the moment. XDD
• Making sure that which 'he' was obvious. Which makes no sense. I had two male characters who spent a lot of time together, and I didn't want to use their names all the time, but then using 'he' all the time also got confusing.
What helped:
• My boyfriend. ♥ He'd pointed out a couple of things while I was in the planning stage and has been supporting me throughout November.
• Knowing that I had readers, so I had to keep going so that they knew what happened next!
• Having a pretty comprehensive plan beforehand.
• Knowing that I had readers, and setting stuff up to then change it later and anticipating/imagining what their reactions would be like when I got to [whatever point].
• Knowing that other people were doing NaNo, and flailing over people's NaNos.
• It all being so fun, either just the writing process, or having all these words pour out. :D
Other stuff:
• Comment dumps!
• It's so weird when you can say 'only 15k to go!' and be absolutely serious, and think that that's a truly small number. It makes sense when you’ve just churned out 35k already.
• I think it was in the first week, I dreamed about writing NaNo, and then got all confused about why my laptop was away from my bed, because I was sure that I'd fallen asleep with it on my lap!
• There was much abuse of the poor comma in my novel. XD I'm sure that there were times that I could have used a semi-colon or something else.
• I'm worried that I may have moved LJ comments before I actually answered them…
• I wanted to have so many fight scenes in this! I was like, 'yes! I've been doing too much talking and introspection in the stuff I've been doing recently, so now I can start blowing stuff up! :D :D :D' And then when I started writing it I got… lots of talking. Lots and lots of talking, with a character who hated talking. XDD In hindsight though, this is a lot better, because fight scene after fight scene would have been boring.
• … There was a lot of swearing in this. XD I knew Marland would swear, but not to the degree that he ended up doing (though, fair enough, some of the situations called for it).
Next year, I'm going challenge myself to surpass my word count of this NaNo. >3 No idea if I'll be able to do it, but hey, I thought I wouldn't come anywhere close to hitting 50k either!
I have a problem though: I want to keep writing and finish Searching, but there's other stuff that I want to do (like looking through the yuletide DYW post for stuff that I could possibly write. And catching up on all the stuff that I've been putting off during November. But I also know that if I don't keep writing, I won't complete it. =/ I might lower my daily word count to 500 words per day, and post it weekly, rather than daily?
*looks up and up and up* I will also have a post when I've finished my novel, detailing all the things that changed, my expectations, and what actually happened instead. This section was tiny compared to what I think the 'making of' post is going to be like.
Now I need to go answer twenty-one comments from a certain somebody. XD
This post is 2,979 words long. I wrote it in the space of two hours. *facepalm*
Lookit the wall in the background. :O I've never seen that amount of snow settled in one place before!
The same place, but from a higher angle.
Normally when it snows, it's a light dusting, like someone spilled a teaspoon of sugar over the pavement. This? Totally not normal. :P
The street that my boyfriend's house is on is insane. The snow's been piled up so high on the side of the road it's very easily up to my shins, and the peaks are just under my knees.