Back in 2008, a teacher friend of mine wanted to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, but didn’t want to do it alone. She knew writing was a hobby of mine and convinced me to sign up as well. If you aren’t familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s an organized event challenging people to write a complete novel during the month of November, with the benchmark of a complete novel being a written work of at least 50,000 words. Anyone and everyone who reaches that 50K mark wins the event, even if you don’t finish telling your entire story. The point isn’t to get everything perfect and polished, but to pound your way through that first draft. My results so far:
2008: Contemporary middle grade satire - Win. Good idea overall, but it started as one story and evolved into a different one halfway through. It remains in the vault.
2009: Literary-leaning contemporary middle grade - Win. Plus it got me an agent four and a half years later, so Win x 100.
2010: Literary-leaning middle grade contemporary fantasy - Win. I still love the concept behind this one, but the manuscript is a mess. Maybe someday it will get another shot.
2011: Middle grade horror - Win. That year I actually took an older manuscript and rewrote it from the ground up, then kept working on it to the point I queried it and even had a full request before I shelved it in favor of a manuscript I was more confident about. I LOVE this one. Now that I have representation, I have serious hopes it will see someday see the light of day.
2012: Contemporary science fiction young adult - Win. This one has a great concept, but is so freaking ambitious and complex I felt I was struggling to do it justice. The first draft remains only mostly finished at about 70,000 words, most of which will have to be rewritten in order for me to ever make it into something real. But the story...ooooh, man... I’m going to have to revisit it someday.
2013: Middle grade comedy - Win. Again, first draft unfinished, but at about 68,000 words. When I finish the revisions on my current project, this one is probably next in the queue.
So that catches us up to 2014, and into an autumn that I’ll openly admit has had more than its share of time demands and stress, not to mention finding me in a place where my writing time and energy would really be best served by working on my latest round of revisions. But does that mean I’m going sit out this year and rest on my winning streak?
Not a chance.
Instead I think I found a way to both work on revisions and aim for my 50,000 word win, which is a goal I have every intention of reaching. This year’s manuscript isn’t going to be one continuous story, but something I’m going to write just for me -- a collection of short stories featuring the characters from the manuscript I'm revising, FOLLOWING INFINITY. By doing this I hope to gain deeper insights about my characters and their relationships, especially as I’m preparing to build up some currently smaller roles into more significant ones. Since the stories I’m thinking about will take place both before and after the events in the story, and possibly even concurrently or from an alternate-timeline perspective, having those added events will give me better background material to work with when I get back to actual revising. It’s been forever since I’ve tried writing short stories and I’m excited about what this could help me discover. (EDIT -- It's a week and a half later. I had a conversation with my agent since writing this post, and consequently got so fired up about a different idea I changed my project over to that. So this whole paragraph? Yeah. Ignore it.)
To any and all writers reading this (especially Twitter folk, and of course anyone else from the greatness that is Team Howland): If you're planning on participating, go ahead and add me as a writing buddy when you sign in. You’ll find me under the username Hooshea (it’s a nonsense word created by a second grader; long story). Having gone from writing in isolation and existing in online anonymity for so many years, I’m looking forward to connecting with other participants. Everyone can be a winner in this, and it never hurts to have more people in your camp! You prod me along and I'll prod you right back.
And if you're one of my non-writer Facebook friends, I'll be posting frequent word count updates during November. Supportive comments along the way are always helpful and appreciated.
Wish me luck!
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