NaNo '14
Well, it’s that time of year again, where I actually get on Livejournal and post something, because it’s tradition and I have nowhere else to put this. Where I tell about me winning NaNoWriMo again, and then try to remember all the crap I wanted to put in this journal throughout the month. Or the day, depending. I know I’ll forget to mention something. I always do.
So yeah, yet another NaNo finished, surprise surprise. Mom seemed to have this weird idea that, because I struggled a bit with NaNo last year, I was done with the whole thing. She still seems to think that, despite the fact that I have stories planned up to 2018 now. And then she seems to think that I’m done writing once I hit the 50,000 words, no matter how many times I tell her I write throughout the month. What would be the point of stopping after I unofficially won when I did it on the tenth? Some people might stop, but hell if I will.
This year was rather interesting, although not in a bad way. I took a year hiatus from writing, although I didn’t mean to. I suddenly found I had a social life, or something akin to it, where I was wanting to spend as much time as possible with my boyfriend. And when I wasn’t with him, I…just didn’t feel like writing. I wrote two chapters of Gatekeeper (need to finish that…), and that was literally it. So I was a little nervous about going into GE this year, because I hadn’t been writing all year, and honing my skills.
I struggled with the outline, because, while I’ve been thinking about the story all year, I hadn’t been writing done my ideas. So all those awesome ideas I had in the middle of the year, I couldn’t remember. Besides which, I never really had a plot for the story. I had a vague idea, yes, but I didn’t really know where I really wanted it to go. Really, I just sort of slapped something together based on my vague ideas, and it seemed to have worked.
The big thing that shocked me this year was how easy it was to write. Maybe because this year, I wasn’t trying to get insane word counts, so I was just sort of writing naturally. I wasn’t trying to have this block of text with no dialogue (dialogue is a word count killer) until the second page. It wasn’t all reflection on Bri’s part, although I’m so used to it that it more or less happened anyway. But I was able to knock out chapters like woah. The hardest day was one day when I came back from work with a slowly increasing headache, but I somehow managed to get rid of it, and went on to finish the chapter in next to no time.
For the most part, the story played out more or less like I expected. There were a few chapters I sort of winged because I thought I knew the outline, and there were some things I forgot even though they’re on the outline. I had one character who decided to be an ass and change completely from the way I planned him in the outline (William), and I had one character who just wouldn’t play nice once we hit a certain part.
Damien refused to be angry with Bri. When he found out about her being smart, it was a little different, because I more or less forced him into it. He was supposed to be mad about the fact that she brought in a off-worlder to save him, but…he just outright refused. He was more mad about the fact that Bri and Ian were rather chummy, and I thought that was hilarious. He was jealous of her brother!
And then he got annoyed at the fact that he hadn’t kissed her yet, despite the fact that he was making it very clear from the time we’re introduced to him that he likes her. So I figured…why the hell not? It’ll make the fact that he’s mad at her for being an off-worlder all the more shocking. EXCEPT HE WASN’T. He seriously thought something like ‘okay, yeah’ upon learning. Jerk.
It worked out for me that I ended up babbling in the chapter after they find out, such that I didn’t get a chance to have her interact with him, because then he’d have ruined everything. She needed to think he hated her so she could be all shocked at the fact that he had come to rescue her. Sadly, I wrote that part wrong as well, since he was supposed to be all twitching and looking a little like he was losing himself because he didn’t have his connection with Sid. But then I starting writing that part, and he was acting normal, and I was like Goddamn.
The other part I screwed up on was Ian staying behind. I forgot that the scientists remained behind, and thus Ian would have, so it seemed all awkward that he just…randomly shows back up at the Black household. But whatever - I can fix that later.
I was also rather annoyed at Sapphros’ role in the story. He was always such a huge part of Bri’s life in my planning, but then I kept forgetting about him when I wrote. So he hardly seems all that important. Same with Sid and the other dragons. When I think about the story, I always seem the dragons playing such a huge role…but I couldn’t write it. But then again, I sometimes forget about certain people I put in scenes as well, so I suppose that just makes sense.
I also hated writing about Bri being a half-wit. Not so much the parts, but I felt like I was being extremely un-PC, and each time I wrote something like that, I could just see certain people getting butt hurt over it. Unfortunately, I developed that part of the story ten years ago, when people didn’t get butt hurt over the stupidest crap, and it was still okay to call people retarded. You didn’t have to be PC all that much. And it was an important part of the story, so I had to include it. It still made me cringe, though.
Oh, I think the funniest thing about this story is that it did come about because of a dream, sort of like Twilight. Exactly like Twilight, actually, since the dream involved the main girl and guy having a conversation. Granted, I couldn’t remember the conversation exactly, but…I developed the story about the dream rather than write the dream, and what happened after, and then wrote the beginning.
The dream, I can remember, involved the guy finding the girl just sitting out on a field, and dragons were flying around, and he just sat down with her and talked. And I think that’s where the half-wit-but-not thing actually came into play, since she explained she was from this place nearby, but wasn’t like those people. I don’t know. In any case, the dream scene happens in the second chapter, more or less, where Damien meets Bri under the tree, when dragons are coming in. Yeah.
It was also fun this year because it was the first year where the guy and the girl already liked each other before the story started. Which, yeah, technically Gatekeeper was like that as well, but Persey lost her memory, so she wasn’t too sure about the whole mess. With Bri and Damien, I got to be all squishy with them earlier on, even if they didn’t actually get into the relationship until later, since they were pussyfooting around the fact that they weren’t sure how the other felt. ;P
Over all, I’m rather pleased with the story. Could it have gone better? Certainly. But what I ended up writing isn’t half bad, and I don’t want to go back and change anything. At least not yet. ;P
There needs to be more crossoverness, though. It’s only downfall. :/
Now, some stats:
NaNo ’08 Purebred: 80,186 words
NaNo ’09 Purebred: The Order of Ara: 113,604 words
NaNo ’10 Earthia: 160,083 words
NaNo ’11 The Gatekeeper: 227,387 words
NaNo ’12 Modern Day Cupid: 83,051 words
NaNo ’13 Angelus Dei: 171,812 words
NaNo ‘14 Genetic Experiment 1004: 148,302 words
The goal this year was to not have an insane word count. However…I ended up with one, anyway. Maybe not as insane as Gatekeeper, but certainly more than some of my other attempts. >.< Oh well, that’s just how I write, and I’m just going to have to accept it, I guess. It was fun writing this way, though. Definitely not going to have to care in the future. :D
Now to go and edit this time in December, and cry over the fact that it wasn’t nearly as good or epic as Cog in the Machine. ;P
So yeah, yet another NaNo finished, surprise surprise. Mom seemed to have this weird idea that, because I struggled a bit with NaNo last year, I was done with the whole thing. She still seems to think that, despite the fact that I have stories planned up to 2018 now. And then she seems to think that I’m done writing once I hit the 50,000 words, no matter how many times I tell her I write throughout the month. What would be the point of stopping after I unofficially won when I did it on the tenth? Some people might stop, but hell if I will.
This year was rather interesting, although not in a bad way. I took a year hiatus from writing, although I didn’t mean to. I suddenly found I had a social life, or something akin to it, where I was wanting to spend as much time as possible with my boyfriend. And when I wasn’t with him, I…just didn’t feel like writing. I wrote two chapters of Gatekeeper (need to finish that…), and that was literally it. So I was a little nervous about going into GE this year, because I hadn’t been writing all year, and honing my skills.
I struggled with the outline, because, while I’ve been thinking about the story all year, I hadn’t been writing done my ideas. So all those awesome ideas I had in the middle of the year, I couldn’t remember. Besides which, I never really had a plot for the story. I had a vague idea, yes, but I didn’t really know where I really wanted it to go. Really, I just sort of slapped something together based on my vague ideas, and it seemed to have worked.
The big thing that shocked me this year was how easy it was to write. Maybe because this year, I wasn’t trying to get insane word counts, so I was just sort of writing naturally. I wasn’t trying to have this block of text with no dialogue (dialogue is a word count killer) until the second page. It wasn’t all reflection on Bri’s part, although I’m so used to it that it more or less happened anyway. But I was able to knock out chapters like woah. The hardest day was one day when I came back from work with a slowly increasing headache, but I somehow managed to get rid of it, and went on to finish the chapter in next to no time.
For the most part, the story played out more or less like I expected. There were a few chapters I sort of winged because I thought I knew the outline, and there were some things I forgot even though they’re on the outline. I had one character who decided to be an ass and change completely from the way I planned him in the outline (William), and I had one character who just wouldn’t play nice once we hit a certain part.
Damien refused to be angry with Bri. When he found out about her being smart, it was a little different, because I more or less forced him into it. He was supposed to be mad about the fact that she brought in a off-worlder to save him, but…he just outright refused. He was more mad about the fact that Bri and Ian were rather chummy, and I thought that was hilarious. He was jealous of her brother!
And then he got annoyed at the fact that he hadn’t kissed her yet, despite the fact that he was making it very clear from the time we’re introduced to him that he likes her. So I figured…why the hell not? It’ll make the fact that he’s mad at her for being an off-worlder all the more shocking. EXCEPT HE WASN’T. He seriously thought something like ‘okay, yeah’ upon learning. Jerk.
It worked out for me that I ended up babbling in the chapter after they find out, such that I didn’t get a chance to have her interact with him, because then he’d have ruined everything. She needed to think he hated her so she could be all shocked at the fact that he had come to rescue her. Sadly, I wrote that part wrong as well, since he was supposed to be all twitching and looking a little like he was losing himself because he didn’t have his connection with Sid. But then I starting writing that part, and he was acting normal, and I was like Goddamn.
The other part I screwed up on was Ian staying behind. I forgot that the scientists remained behind, and thus Ian would have, so it seemed all awkward that he just…randomly shows back up at the Black household. But whatever - I can fix that later.
I was also rather annoyed at Sapphros’ role in the story. He was always such a huge part of Bri’s life in my planning, but then I kept forgetting about him when I wrote. So he hardly seems all that important. Same with Sid and the other dragons. When I think about the story, I always seem the dragons playing such a huge role…but I couldn’t write it. But then again, I sometimes forget about certain people I put in scenes as well, so I suppose that just makes sense.
I also hated writing about Bri being a half-wit. Not so much the parts, but I felt like I was being extremely un-PC, and each time I wrote something like that, I could just see certain people getting butt hurt over it. Unfortunately, I developed that part of the story ten years ago, when people didn’t get butt hurt over the stupidest crap, and it was still okay to call people retarded. You didn’t have to be PC all that much. And it was an important part of the story, so I had to include it. It still made me cringe, though.
Oh, I think the funniest thing about this story is that it did come about because of a dream, sort of like Twilight. Exactly like Twilight, actually, since the dream involved the main girl and guy having a conversation. Granted, I couldn’t remember the conversation exactly, but…I developed the story about the dream rather than write the dream, and what happened after, and then wrote the beginning.
The dream, I can remember, involved the guy finding the girl just sitting out on a field, and dragons were flying around, and he just sat down with her and talked. And I think that’s where the half-wit-but-not thing actually came into play, since she explained she was from this place nearby, but wasn’t like those people. I don’t know. In any case, the dream scene happens in the second chapter, more or less, where Damien meets Bri under the tree, when dragons are coming in. Yeah.
It was also fun this year because it was the first year where the guy and the girl already liked each other before the story started. Which, yeah, technically Gatekeeper was like that as well, but Persey lost her memory, so she wasn’t too sure about the whole mess. With Bri and Damien, I got to be all squishy with them earlier on, even if they didn’t actually get into the relationship until later, since they were pussyfooting around the fact that they weren’t sure how the other felt. ;P
Over all, I’m rather pleased with the story. Could it have gone better? Certainly. But what I ended up writing isn’t half bad, and I don’t want to go back and change anything. At least not yet. ;P
There needs to be more crossoverness, though. It’s only downfall. :/
Now, some stats:
NaNo ’08 Purebred: 80,186 words
NaNo ’09 Purebred: The Order of Ara: 113,604 words
NaNo ’10 Earthia: 160,083 words
NaNo ’11 The Gatekeeper: 227,387 words
NaNo ’12 Modern Day Cupid: 83,051 words
NaNo ’13 Angelus Dei: 171,812 words
NaNo ‘14 Genetic Experiment 1004: 148,302 words
The goal this year was to not have an insane word count. However…I ended up with one, anyway. Maybe not as insane as Gatekeeper, but certainly more than some of my other attempts. >.< Oh well, that’s just how I write, and I’m just going to have to accept it, I guess. It was fun writing this way, though. Definitely not going to have to care in the future. :D
Now to go and edit this time in December, and cry over the fact that it wasn’t nearly as good or epic as Cog in the Machine. ;P