Nanowrimo Blog

amber September 27th, 2008

Nanowrimo 2003

2003 was the first year that I’d participated in Nanowrimo, and I had stupidly decided to do a historical mainstream novel, all by the seat-of-my pants with absolutely no preparation in place. Yeah, let’s just call that one a big FAIL, though I ended up moving some of the characters over to my 2004 Nanowrimo. The main theme, since you can’t really call it a plot, was a kind of coming of age post-World War I in Paris. Blame the fact that I had just recently re-read “Between the Flames” about Europe between the World Wars.

 

Nanowrimo 2004

2004 was my second attempt in doing Nano, and again, I made the mistake of just not thinking about it before November came around. I didn’t win again, but I came out of it with some more great characters, and I got further in this word count by double of what I did in 2003, which was a plus in my outlook. The plot of this was based on the close friendship of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves during World War I. If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m just a little obsessed with World War I, though I also notice a theme in that whatever I’m reading in September/October tends to affect my writing in November.

 

Nanowrimo 2005

2005 was a great Nano-year, as I didn’t just win, I finally got out of World War I rut I seemed to have been in for the first two years of Nanowrimo. The plot was actually centered around the Yorktown area of Tidewater, Virginia. It happened in two time periods, with an archaeologist finding the diaries of a girl who survived the Revolutionary War in the area, and the murder mystery that she recorded in those diaries. I never actually finished the story, of course (another theme you’ll hear a lot about on this blog) but I did get my 50,000 words for Nano. Who knows, I might even finish it one of these days. It was also the first year I started writing on this blog.

 

Nanowrimo 2006

Ah, the beautiful year of 2006. I did very well this year in terms of wordcount because the contract job that I was working in October ended up expiring in November, so while I was working on a bunch of freelance contracts, my days could be devoted to Nanowrimo. Another story that I got my word count in a more than reasonable time, but again, like 2005, I never ended up finishing the actual story. The plot of this one was my first foray into Romantic Suspense, using my first Adopt-A-Plot inspiration from the forums, detailed here.

 

Nanowrimo 2007

I really should have known better in 2007 and just taken the year off of Nano. But, I didn’t, and I failed at somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 words, which I blame a ton on the fact that we were in the middle of a full site redesign at work. When you’re working in excess of 120 hours every two weeks, time to string together more than a couple of words at night, let alone 1,667 words a night seems a bit of an obstacle. The plot was my second from the Adopt-A-Plot threads, where the world (modern) is full of magic, but there’s a guy out there who negates all the magic around him.

 

Nanowrimo 2008

So, if you notice this timestamp for this page, you’ll realize that I’m currently writing this in the end of September for Nanowrimo 2008. Since I’ve decided to go with a pretty straight up Mystery/Thriller this year, I’m doing everything I can to get things set up before writing this November. I’ve already gotten my plot (thanks again to Adopt-A-Plot threads), and I’m about to finish up my character sheets, and onto a full plot outline before Nano starts this year.

Share/Save

• Comments(0)