NaNoWriMo: DEFEATED!

The beast has been slain!


Although, in that scenario I suppose it’s not as exciting since in around a month it’ll rise from the grave again and I’ll have an even tougher slog besting it. Draft two is never simple or easy. But still, I’ve completed the first draft of The Masks of Valdune, the story I’ve always just referred to as “Sherlock Holmes in Fantasy Land.”


So, I actually wrapped up the 50K required by NaNoWriMo in a mad dash on Friday. I think it’s my fastest pace yet and, to be honest, the two weeks are kind of a blur, now. I used this November to work on a novel I’d originally set aside after 20,000 words (for various reasons, most relating to the frustrations of trying to write a mystery novel by the seat of my pants), and so November brought me to a 70,000 word completion of the novel as a whole. Which is short for me, but I’ve come to realize that I add about half the length back on again in my edits, so the final thing will most likely end up somewhere around 100K+


This NaNoWriMo came on the tail of just finishing another novella, so it was definitely interesting switching gears from a sort of Viking-inspired adventure to a Victorian-Sherlock-Holmes-Fantasy detective story. What was even more interesting was trying to write a detective story with only the most basic elements of planning going on beforehand. Back when I was doing the original 20K of this project I made a blog post here about how difficult it was to organize my facts and how much I wanted a giant whiteboard to chart things out.


How I wish I had taken that advice from my past self!


I operate best when I’m writing by the seat of my pants. In On Writing, Stephen King compared writing a first draft with digging out a fossil. You uncover this behemoth figure beneath the sand, guessing at its shape and slowly picking away at the details. It’s a mad, exciting dash as you get caught up in character’s heads and you start to figure out the plot that’s been building in your head all along.


Trying to apply that method to a mystery/detective story, however, maybe isn’t the best way to go about things. I had a general idea for how I wanted things to end and for the most part I think I nailed a lot of the beats that I wanted to, but by the time I hit the 50,000 word goal I was starting to see how much better the ending would have been if I’d lined everything up beforehand. On the other hand, any time I try to extensively plot a novel before I dive in, the spark is extinguished, and so the knots and the tangle are a mess, but at least it’s a mess I can work with.


And besides, that’s what draft two is for!


If you want to learn more about The Masks of Valdune, the awesome Nadine Ducca featured me on her blog about NaNoWriMo and the page includes a summary of Masks and even a sample in the form of a few pages. You can find the blog post here!


How about you guys? If you’re doing NaNoWriMo: How’s it going? And are you adhering to a strict plot you established or writing by the seat of your pants?



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Published on November 19, 2012 06:46
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