Day 0 - Here it comes

Happy Halloween!!!

It is officially the day before NaNo starts. My mind is not a pleasant place to be right now, let me tell you all. It's all a mixture of stress, characters arguing loudly and a whole bunch of loud swearing coming from me curled up in the corner. I know, I know. I sound crazy for wanting to take this on. But if I don't do it now when will I. Creative writing has always been my dream and it's taken me far too long to realise it. With the first few opportunities to fulfil this slowly slipping away, I have to grab on to some new possibilities.

So, I sit here on the last day of October, with a blank document open on my laptop screen in front of me. I've decided against starting as soon as the clock strikes midnight and we're finally into the first day of writing, but I'm to tired to even begin to think about starting now.

I'm nervous and apprehensive, but that's to be expected, I hope. I've never pushed myself to write this much every single day, let alone even in the short time span of a month, so I have no idea what it's going to be like and how well I do. Maybe, in the end, this really is about figuring out whether my aspirations aren't all that crazy, that I could do this every day for a long time after my experiment.

Time to find out. Wish me luck!

And to anyone else who is doing this challenge too, I wish you warm hugs, thousands of words and infinite cups of coffee or tea. Because everyone deserves tea!

Bookish Thoughts - The Pledge

A review thing that isn't really a review... thing.

I brought this book just a couple of days ago now on a bit of a whim. I'd seen it many times on the shelves but it had never really caught me eye. I'm unfortunately a bit of a book cover judge. Not in the sense that I'm drawn to pretty covers. It's more the fact that I'm pushed away by covers that seem too cliche. But anyway, that's going off topic and is something for another day. The main point of this was The Pledge and my need to quickly talk about it.

Let's get down to basic information first. It's written by Kimberly Derting, who apparently wrote The Body Finder series. This other series has been recommended to me by a friend before so when I saw the authors name, I thought I'd give it a look. It's stated to be a dystopian fantasy and that was the thing that really got me interested. As the novel I'm attempting to write is dystopia, I've been trying to be a good little author and read around my genre before starting my writing, and this was a sub genre I've never seen before. Perhaps I just haven't read enough, but that was the case. And the final tipping point was this: I read the prologue. It was short so I didn't feel too bad about it. Sometimes, reading the first pages feels like a betrayal of the book to me, but other times, I have to do it. I wanted to know whether the book would be worth reading and the prologue intrigued me. So I said "Let's go for it!"

At first, I thought I had been highly mistaken. It had very simple prose with a typical dystopian opening - Girl introduces reader to their society, days-in-the-life are shown, aspects that horrify us but are normal to said character etc etc... This lasted for around 100 odd pages. Maybe a few more. Then, as I was beginning to see the odd glimmer of hope in a few occasional beautifully worded sentences, a bomb was dropped. Quite literally. Things began to pick up a little pace and it stopped me from putting the book down.

Now usually, I'm one of those readers that correctly guesses much of what is going to happen in a novel. Maybe it's that the novel is too cliche or maybe I just subconsciously skip ahead, but what are supposed to be dramatic plot twists are usually lack luster because I've figured them out. I don't like this but I live with it. It's definitely not something I like doing. So when a book gives me a plot twist that is actually an unexpected plot twist, I get very excited. A this book certainly did. I don't know how I didn't spot it but I didn't and when I read it, it thrilled me. And then I was hit with another. And then one more after that. I'm pretty sure, however, that what was meant to be the most dramatic unveiling wasn't as effective to me. But oh well.

All in all, it got me thinking about what makes a good plot twist when your writing it. Is it something that you throw in there when things get too dull to shake the readers up? Or is it something that you work to conceal throughout the beginning of the novel? In other words, are your plot twist planned? With this one, I'm glad it happened, because otherwise, I may have stopped reading, a rare occurrence for me. Now with only a chapter or two to go, I hope Kimberly Derting can plot twist me again.

06/11/13 UPDATE: She did.

Day -5: The plotting, the planning and the panicking

It's only really just hit how few days I have left before this little experiment commences. That's fine though... isn't it? I hope so.

Since signing up for NaNo about a month ago, I've made some interesting developments. I haven't gone into this first year uprepared and set to wing it when November 1st rolls around of course, nor have I decided on a plot a few weeks ago and planned furiously this whole time. I'm writing an idea that's been with me for a long while and has become quite dear to me so dosen't that put me in a worse position then those previous two options? Possibly. I have less margin for error. I want to do this right which means I can't just forget the whole thing and move on if it goes terribly wrong. Well, I could, but it would be a painful seperation of author and idea. Plus, my characters would hate me and verbally berate me in my mind for days. But let us not dwell on that.

On to those developments I have made. Firstly, I got myself a mentor, and she is brilliant. Practically my twin. She's also been incredibly helpful and supportive in just the few short weeks I've known her. There's no doubt in my mind that, if I manage to get to that gigantuan word goal, she will be one of the main reasons why. I've also been exploring the forums, an act of development in itself. There are questionaires aplenty, direct questions to apply to your character and story and brilliant discussions on what makes a novel good or bad.

Along with that, in asking for a little help with novel naming, I was forced to adress a massive plot hole in my narrative. Or at least, it was a plot hole that I'd generally explained, but not in enough detail to be understandable. It made me sit down, think about it, fathom it out and WRITE IT DOWN. I've had difficulty with the actual writing part before. Ironic really, now I think about it. So far, so good right? Hopefully.

I'll leave a few of my question responces here over the next couple of days. In the mean time, let's keep it going.

Day -7: The Writing Escapade Commences

You know what escapade I'm talking about? NaNoWriMo. For anyone who is reading this and is completely new to this strange sounding... thing, let me enlighten you. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, an event in which thousands of writers attempt to write 50,000 words of their novel in one month. One month. And despite the fact that I am taking three A-Levels, the EPQ and I am trying to figure out what the heck I want to do with the rest of my life and probably three years of crippling debt, I have decided to undertake this challenge.

I must be insane.

You have found the site of my mad mutterings for the next couple of months. Here, I shall talk about my progress (hopefully), my frequent desire to give up and the beautiful wonder that is literature and the imagination. You have been warned. I will talk to myself and to my characters. I will post things that make absolutely no sense. Occasionally, there may be something of actual worth buried amongst the madness, but don't get your hopes up.

Kaylen, Toby, Hannah, Evi and Cole are all ready to escape my head and get on with their story. And I'm ready to get on with mine.
So let's do this.