So there is nothing better in the world, I think, receiving a little bit of praise for something that is not often noticed or recognized as an accomplishment. That’s why I love NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) – it gives writers a chance to bust their chops to produce something in the month of November, 50,000 words in one month, and then get a little bit of a celebration for their accomplishing their goal. When you get down to it, writing is often a thankless creative outlet that can bring nothing but frustration and sleepless nights. This time, however, it has brought a little bit of fun and frolic along with the bouts of rampant creative-inspired insomnia.
For this year’s NaNo, I decided to try a different novel idea than what I had done previously in the past. The last three years, I wrote a trilogy of novels set during an apocalypse with demons and angels in them. This year, its a modern world with ancient and crazy gods. You can see how my brain works, of course, to destroy the world blatantly in so many ways. I went for something a little more subtle, though, this time (and yes, I can hear you wondering – how are crazy gods actually less destructive? Oh they are!) and the result is a novel called Emerald Fires. This is the working title, of course, but for once in a long time… I think I have something here. I think I have a solid, creative idea that is actually a new take on something old and well-done to death. So the stats go down to this:
As of November 29:
- Word Count: 52,972
- Page Count: 149 (in manuscript format)
- Chapters: 15
This new story is one I’m hoping to continue for the next little while, so I’m postponing the work I planned on doing for the other two huge projects of mine, Exeter and Big Pete (my monstrocities, as I call them).
Oh, and update! So instead of lugging about my current writing machine (two-year-old 15 inch macbook pro), I have decided to go much more portable which is a Dell Mini – I have gone to the land of the PC for a netbook. The little thing is driving me nuts, though, because the keyboard is smaller than my frickin’ hands, but we’ll see how it works out. I’m looking to upgrade my Macbook Pro anyway, so that will make my old machine a stay-at-home anyway… I just plan on making sure that writing for me is the most painless process possible, and lugging around a 15-inch macbook pro when you’ve got back pain like me? Not painless!
Speaking of painless, for any Mac user? Check out a program called Scrivener for writing. It is fantastic – helps compile everything into manuscript format for you, and on top of that? Helps you keep your research, old drafts, everything. I heartily enjoy it and it made NaNo-ing this year a dream.
Anyway, that’s it for now!