December the First

NaNoWriMo over. Won.

50 000 words. 1 character killed. 3 kisses. 1 impossible love story that wasn’t supposed to be the heart of the book. 14 000 words taking place in Montana. 3 mentions of Paul Bettany. Dozens of stupid T-shirts described. More mono-syllable dialogues than I can count. 3 write-ins attended.

Let’s start with a few gems:

• Have you mad friends?
• I grabbed my notebook and opened a web browser.
• My eyes clothed.
• It made me sound like a joke (instead of a jock).
• They broke my heart with a baseball bat.

So, what have I learned during this NaNo? That moving in November is a bad idea for your word-count. That I absolutely can write 5k in a day if I’m motivated. That writing without a plan can be fun, but that “I’m almost at that scene I so wanted to write” is always a lie. That write-ins rock. That when you’re stuck, discussing your story with someone makes it much easier. That if you don’t look at your word-count every five seconds and write instead, it will actually go up.

Write-ins were great and I fully intend on organizing some more during the year now that I have a bigger apartment. It’s not about competition or anything, it’s about not working alone. I don’t know, there’s an incredible motivation to find in hearing other people typing. I wrote something like 15k during write-ins, which for me, is a lot.

Now that I finally know what A House of mirrors is about, I need to finish the story, because I still haven’t told why Charlie is pretending to be a guy, and I’m not even close to that point. At first, I didn’t think I had 50k to say over this story and I’m still surprised I’m not finished with it yet. Yesterday, I told a friend the story would end up being 70k, she reminded me that the part with Thanksgiving in Montana, which was supposed to go like “Hi, that turkey smells heavenly, Ma’am, bye!” is 14k long and that I don’t stand a chance. So, no prognosis.

I have a lot more to say about HoM and the NaNo, but Lisbeth, my pocket black panther, is much too fascinated by the cursor to let me write (and I’d like to avoid accidents, since it’s a touch-screen). I’ll get back to it later!