My most recent literary endeavours

I took part in that NaNoWriMo thing last November, having a crack at writing a novel over the length of the month. I made it up as I went along but gave it a kind of structure by largely having the characters follow the route I took in September when I travelled to and around Greece. That meant that I could incorporate some local colour and add into the narrative things I saw or that happened to me (as well as things I just made up, obviously).

If you have ever wondered what a novel made up as it was written quickly would be like, you can see chapter 1 here. There is a link from that on to chapter 2 and so on, and links to all of the chapters below. I will not leave them up on my writing blog website indefinitely, so if you think you will want to read them, do so while you can.

I would like to devote myself more seriously to literary endeavours, but I fear that my Important Project will be consuming my free time for the foreseeable future.

Chapter 1 - The Alps. From a Train.

Chapter 2 - Playing Games

Chapter 3 - Milanese Dreams

Chapter 4 - New Friends

Chapter 5 - Divine Intervention

Chapter 6 - Strangers on a Train

Chapter 7 - Friend or Foe?

Chapter 8 - Temptation

Chapter 9 - Continuing Journey

Chapter 10 - Choices

Chapter 11 - Endings and Beginnings

Chapter 12 - Getting to Know You

Chapter 13 - Into Danger

Chapter 14 - Embracing the Evening

Chapter 15 - Et in Argolis Ego

Chapter 16 - Crystallisation

Chapter 17 - On the Road

Chapter 18 - Preparation

Chapter 19 - The Eve of Destruction

Chapter 20 - Strange Journey

Chapter 21 - Not Long Left

Chapter 22 - It Is Time

Chapter 23 - In Conclusion

My failed literary endeavours

I had a crack at NaNoWriMo last year but failed to write 50,000 words. I recently posted up the chapters I did write. You can see them at the links below (until I get round to deleting them). Chapters 2 and 4 are perhaps superfluous and could be skipped, though I would not want to be prescriptive.

Chapter 1 - Helping out an old friend
Chapter 2 - A night out that started well
Chapter 3 - A mystery - or a wild goose chase?
Chapter 4 - Dawning realisation
Chapter 5 - The Police prove uncooperative
Chapter 6 - The Vicar, his wife, and their friend
Chapter 7 - Uninvited guests at a funeral
Chapter 8 - The popular novelist and the devil dog of doom
Chapter 9 - Late lunch with a beautiful woman
Chapter 10 - Reading, dining, dreaming
Chapter 11 - Apparent breakthrough, worrying reverse
Chapter 12 - Visiting the library
Chapter 13 - There is nothing more dangerous than an armed woman in a nightdress

Maybe one day I will attempt to salvage something from this wreckage.

"The Gathering"

There is this thing called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. The month is November and in it people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel, starting from scratch; pre-plotting and so on is allowed before November, but no actual words of the novel may be written. I have myself had a go at this NaNoWriMo business, twice succeeding and twice failing. You may recall I posted my two successes on this blog before deleting them to deter plagiarists and stop people from mocking me for my meagre literary endeavours.

In 2012 I failed to produce 50,000 words in November. Nevertheless, as a service to the world I have decided to post what I did write on a blog specially dedicated to my bad fiction. Here are links to the first four chapters of The Gathering:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Future chapters will appear every day here until the text runs out. I will not be posting daily links to each new chapter - if this kind of thing interests you, you will need to go to Panda Write Bad yourself to see them. Or you could ask me to e-mail them to you.

Gratuitous Pandas

see also

NaNoWriMo Fail

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