Nanowrimo

It is again NaNoWriMo time!

National Novel Writing Month has me all tied up. All my spare time has gone into typing, typing, typing.

I'm home for Thanksgiving break, and my goal is to finish the last 20,000 words. I can do this!  I'm at 35,000 and I can keep going.

I'm working on Enmityville Chronicles. Enmityville is a town where those with special magical abilites and non-humans live side by side in mutual and decided ignorance and acceptance of the fact that non-humans exist. The tales are told from the points of view of a new family brought into the town completely oblivious to it's inner secrets and workings. They soon learn, along with the reader, how things are. They also learn why they were chosen to be there.

My husband and I are writing this series of novellas. There are supposed to be ten books in all. I've been writing my half of the stories for Nano. I started on book two because book one is mostly finished, though it needs some major overhauls in parts now that we know how the series is going to go. When we wrote book one we were still unsure of all the races, problems, and even plots.

In order to write a series, you need several over-arching plots. Each book has a problem to solve, but also each book introduces a character and situation that will come into play later.

I am now writing book four. I finished books two and three according to the plans we discussed this month. The best part about this is that I can talk to my husband, bounce ideas off of him, tell him about the new characters I have created, and he is invested. He wants to know about the story and he can give me good feedback. I also love when one of my character interactions fits in perfectly with his vision for their interactions. I can say 'yes! he or she did exactly that!'. He motivates me to keep going and helps me get through writing slumps.

No, pausing to write this blog post does not mean I am in a writing slump.

It means I needed to take a break and gather my thoughts for the next big scene. :)

Excerpt:

Book 2: On Dwarves and Elves

Laura Jones, now living in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska in a small town called Enmityville, opened yet another door in the vast hospital she had taken to touring all by herself. The single doctor on staff, Fields, was entombed in the cavernous staff lounge with ESPN. The head nurse, Haythorne, was always mysteriously missing, but would turn up at odd moments to criticize something Laura was doing. Only the receptionist, Ashley, remained faithfully at her desk buried in cat videos.

This room, once lit by the flick of switch, proved to be an empty apothecary. Bottles sat in a few designated spots, but the dust on their white caps gave evidence that no one had needed medicines like these in a long while. Laura checked the expiration date on a random bottle. It had expired 3 years ago.

She sighed. Marking the door with her trusty red dry erase marker, she set off in search of a cart and boxes to empty out the room.

It bothered her that someone with her training, years of heard-earned education, hours of clinicals, and her record of saved lives would spend her days cleaning and straightening an empty but otherwise functional hospital.

She found a cart near one of the triage rooms near the main emergency entrance. As she pushed it past the entrance and behind the receptionist desk, she heard Ashley talking to someone. Intrigued that they might actually have a patient, she stopped to eavesdrop.

“Nurse Haythorne isn’t answering,” Ashley was telling the air outside of the phone held to one ear. “She is very busy.”

Laura knew that was a lie. No one was busy here. Nurse Haythorne was simply hard to track down. Rather than use the paging system, Ashley had opted for a direct call to her desk. That meant this wasn’t an emergency. It seemed odd that Ashley would screen visitors. Had she been sending people away?

Laura stepped closer. She couldn’t see the speaker beyond Ashley and the desk. But she suddenly heard them.

“She specifically ordered these!”

The voice was coming from below the desk, a little shrill with exasperation.

“I was told to deliver them to her personally and I’m not leaving until I hand this basket over to Nurse Haythorne!”

Laura was involved now. She stepped around the desk to take in a very small person. She had never seen a real dwarf in her life, not even in a single hospital she’d interned in. Dwarfism was fascinating and it was hard to look away when you first saw one. The polite thing was to speak up instead of act like you weren’t staring.

“Hello, my name is Laura. I’m a nurse here. I could take those, if you like.” The little woman was holding a basket, covered, handle over one arm.

“No! These must only go to Nurse Haythorne!”

“What are they?”

A squeak of warning escaped from Ashley. Laura looked at her wide eyes and slightly shaking head. Had she said something wrong?

“Just go and find her! She knows I’m here.”

“Alright, who may I tell her is delivering a package?”

The little woman squinted and sized Laura up. She clearly had some measure in her mind as to Laura’s trustworthiness. She must have chosen to give Laura a chance, because she replied, “Tell her her shipment has arrived. That’s all.”

It was a test. Perhaps if she accomplished what Ashley could not, she would win the woman’s name. Laura was bored and accepted the challenge.

“Alright. I guess you can wait here and I’ll try to find her. I’ll call the front desk when I do.”

The woman gave a single curt nod and turned to find a seat. Laura then looked at Ashley questioningly. The receptionist gave her an eyebrows raised look that said, ‘it’s your funeral’.

How Do you Write a Book in a Month?

What's my next venture?

Camp Nanowrimo.

This is a month-long writing challenge for July. You set your goal. The ultimate is 50,000 words. I set mine for 30,000 words. Usually, I began to fizzle out around there. Life happens. 

This year, I have written an outline. I hope this helps me get past the fizzle. I hope I break 30K and hit 50K. I hope I shatter 50K. But I know that I will also be planning for a new school year. 

Speaking of school, I dreamed this morning that I had to babysit one of my former students! I got paid, and the student was a perfect angel. Definitely a dream! It was really odd, but dreams usually are. 

Back to reality, I'm excited about getting this story started! It was an idea I wrote when I was about 12. I did add some details to it later in my life, but this story idea came out of me when I was young. It is not finished. I had some of the villain's backstory, and some of the first action, so I fleshed it out in an outline. We'll see how it goes! These stories always take turns I cannot predict and I give myself permission to stray from the outline and maybe find a new and better direction. Like a crazy dream, sometimes the story takes off on its own and there's very little you can do to get it back on track.

How do you write a book in a month?

1. Challenge yourself. Write a 1,000 words a day.  Set up a marketing plan and pre-orders and a deadline.

2. Outline. But give yourself permission to let the characters tell you their story, even if it goes off-script 

3. Set aside time to write. Even if you snag 15 minutes at a time, write! A couple or a few of those make a big difference. 

That's it. Just write. Don't worry about editing, that takes another month. It's okay to make a cover, write a summary, back page notes, one line tag, etc. But focus that first month on just writing it all down so you have something to share.