So, it’s almost November, National Novel Writing Month. I was very much prepared to rest on the laurels of last year’s NaNoWriMo success and not enter the challenge this time around. One reason for my reluctance being the fact I’ve not yet edited last year’s entry since I completed the challenge on 30th November 2011. But more worryingly, that I’d made very little progress on the work-in-progress novel that I began at the start of 2011, stuck at around 30,000 words. I have at least turned a large chunk of those words into a screenplay to accompany the first act, but the novel remains unfinished. So if I was going to do any writing, it should be to finish the novel rather than work on a new NaNoWriMo challenge.
Enter the hero
But thanks to Richie Brown‘s prompts on Twitter or Facebook – I forget exactly where – I began to think twice about participating again this year. Except, rather than come up with a new story, I realised I could probably just use the wave of enthusiasm and nightly Twitter Nano sprints to push myself to finish my original novel. It wouldn’t be a legitimate entry as such; one of the rules is to work on a completely new idea. But I’m not too fussed about that; even if I don’t actually “win” this year and fall behind on the daily word targets, I’ll still have made some progress on finally completing the novel, which is a good thing.
To make it a little more legitimate, rather than continue from the middle of act two where I stopped writing, I have decided to jump ahead to act three. The beauty of this novel is that it is mostly three separate stories set in three different time periods, with a common strand that runs through all three. So, by skipping ahead to the final act, I think it can be considered a brand new story for a fully fledged legitimate NaNoWriMo entry.
NaNoWriMo – I wish I knew how to quit you
So, my aim is to write 50,000 words towards act three, which will take the original novel up to 80,000 words. Then there’s the small matter of finishing act two, before I edit everything back down to around 60-80k words after editing. Oh, and finish the screenplay for act one.
