NaNoWriMo 2015 – Week 4

Tomorrow (okay, today if you count midnight as the change between days, but I’m more of a measure days by when you sleep kind of girl) is the last day of NaNoWriMo.

How have I done? Not badly. I’ve just hit 73K, which means that it’s only 2,000 more words until 75K. That would be nice to end on. I started this month aiming for 100K, but given the stress and the masters and everything else that has been going on, I’m not going to be too disappointed with 75K

Well, I’m trying to tell myself that. I know that I could have done better, but this month hasn’t been smooth sailing for me. Ups and a lot of downs, illness, exhaustion, balancing acts between trying to do too many things. Hopefully, Decemeber will be less stress.

Also, you know, I haven’t finished the novel. Not by a long shot. So, although I have 75K under my belt, what I am also hoping I now have is some sort of routine, where I can come home and continue to chip away at at this novel until it’s done, although at a slower pace than NaNoWriMo I think.

We’ll call it a win, because that’s what it is. I just need to convince my brain to smile about it, because writing more than you had at the beginning of the month is what NaNo is all about in my opinion, and I’ve certainly done that.

So, for this final instalment, I’ll talk about my actual writing process. My actual decisions when I come to write novels.

Plotter vs Panster? Pantser. All the way. For Eidetic this year I had a word document with names for the important characters, and a timeline of big events. And that’s a lot of planning for me, mainly I did that because I was having trouble with the order that things were meant to go in. I really do prefer just opening up a blank screen and getting on with things. And yes, I have tried to plan in the past. A couple of different methods, it’s just not worked for me. So the ideas brew in my head, and when I’m ready, or they’re ready, I open up at the document and start typing.

Chronological vs out-of-order? You know, I always thought I would be the latter. Indeed, my first NaNoWriMo I did do out of order. However, ever since then, I’ve been chronological. My last four NaNoWiMo’s, including this year’s have all been chronological. I think it allows for development, both of the novel, the characters, and of me as I write, although stuff like that can always be fixed in editing. I think if I ever got stuck on a particular part, I would skip it, write the bit I knew what was happening with, and then come back to fill it in. That hasn’t happened yet, but it’s something I could easily see myself doing.

Character vs Plot? ……bit of both? No, actually, I would say plot. I start with plot and work my characters into plot. However, I am very aware that a good book only works with good characters, so I do make sure that my characters have personality, and traits, and aren’t one dimensional, and they develop as thing go along. But, I do start with the plot, and I tend to know what people are doing before I know how they go about it, or how they react to things.

Morning Lark vs Night Owl? Night Owl, I always prefer staying up late to getting up early, it’s just how I work. Naturally, I go to sleep at 3am and wake up at midday, I’ve tested this. Although, one of the writing groups I’m in shared this very interesting infographic about authors productivity and waking times. Turns out, quite a lot of writers are morning larks.

So basically, it can be summed up, as I will sit down, late at night, on the sofa, on my laptop, something playing in the background (tonight it’s QI), open up the writing software and just start typing. That’s how I write.

I hope that those of you who have been doing NaNoWriMo as well ahave validated or are close to it, and if not, then I am sure that you have more right now that you had at the start of the month!

 

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Also, congratulation to this blog – Five Years Old today! It’s been through some changes, but I think it’s only gotten better, I certainly like it now more than ever ^.^