Alas, this year I have failed to complete NaNoWriMo, which means I have not written a 50,000 word novel in November. For the curious, I have posted the two first chapters of my failed attempt on the internet, where you can see them here and here.This is the fourth time I have tried NaNoWriMo and the second time I have failed. Various things got in my way this year, but I was struck by a couple of similarities between my attempt this year and my last failed attempt in 2010. Like that, this is (partly) a first person narrative, while my two successful attempts were in the third person. I also had a more developed sense of where I wanted the two unsuccessful attempts to go before starting than with the NaNoWriMos I completed. The lesson here may be to either very heavily plot out what is going to happen beforehand (no fun) or else to have no plan on beginning and just go where the mood takes you.
You can read the first chapters of my two completed NaNoWriMo novels here:
Furry Folk (2008)
Organisation Man (2011)
And as a special treat for all true believers, here, for the first time anywhere, is the first chapter of my never completed 2010 NaNoWriMo attempt:
My German Friend
Reading that again I found it quite entertaining. Maybe one day I will bring that tale to a conclusion.
Disappointed Panda
An inuit panda production
2 comments:
Poor panda.
My novel this year was rubbish, even though I technically completed it and therefore got to "win". Our group has decided that next year we're going to book a room in late October and have a big kick-off planning session.
Quantity not quality! You win, I lose. Er, I don't really have quality either.
I do now would-be proper writers who treat NaNoWriMo as an occasion to get out something approximating to a first draft of a real book (with all that pre-planning stuff beforehand), but that does seem a bit like cheating, even though it isn't. Still, it's a broad church.
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