Saturday, October 31
This is my last day before absolute madness. I am about to embark on an insane writing journey of vast quantities. In the month of November, I am going to *attempt* to write a 50,000 word novel. Divvy it up, and that's at least 1,667 words per day.
Crazy, eh?
I happen to think so. I've been wondering what this experience is going to be like. 50,000 words is huge to me, considering the longest thing I've ever written was just shy of 12,000. This is completely different from that, though. Rather than taking my sweet time to make every sentence perfect, I'm going to just write as much as I can as quickly as possible.
When I managed to pry my mind from the day looming ahead of me, I worked on character descriptions in my notebook. It was pretty much just listing things like eye and hair color, physique, likes and dislikes, etc. I got so sucked into working on them that I forgot to eat lunch. I had leftovers after 2 PM. I ate in my room so I could keep working.
I noticed that one of my characters lacked any major flaws, so I decide to research phobias online. Mr. Perfect now has chronomentrophobia . . . he's afraid of clocks. I told my mom. She laughed.
I also finalized most of the names today. My favorite is Prudence Keys. It just sounds cool. I rather enjoy naming people.
I also enjoy sleeping, but I don't see that in the near future.
0/50,000 words
Sunday, November 1
Wow. That's really all I can say. As I said yesterday, I really had no idea what to expect. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised, though.
I got off to a slow start. I spent half an hour doing a mix of procrastinating and figuring out how to start my story. After I sorted that out, I started typing like crazy. When I stopped for lunch (which I only remembered to do because my mom reminded me), I had a little over 1,200 words. By my margins and font size, I had around two pages of writing.
I was quite pleased with myself. I'm really used to writing short stories, so I wasn't sure how things would go.
Highlights of the day:
- I took a whole paragraph to describe someone's hair.
- That blasted woodpecker came by again and started pecking on the side of the house. ANNOYING!
- Well, I suppose actually getting started would make the highlight reel as well.
2,507/50,000 words
Monday, November 2
Today was the first day that I had both school and NaNo. My mom conveniently waited until TODAY to assign me a health research paper.
Yup, I needed to think about characters, plot, word count, how to kill off characters, AND H1N1. Fantastic. Thanks, Mom. (I'm homeschooled, in case you were wondering.)
I had one of those weird moments this morning when I wake up really early, think for a while, and then fall back to sleep. With my brain in creative mode (aka half asleep), I decided to make someone jump off of a balcony in my story. Dun dun dunnn!
Kinky.
I also just HAD to stop today when I reached such a cool word count. Check it out!
4,444/50,000 words
Tuesday, November 3
I got off to a slow start today, but I did pretty well once I figured out what I was doing.
I had a field day describing the main character's love interest. I must say that I am very glad to have him in my story. Indeed. I call him Manny, Devourer of Word Counts. He does his job very well.
Now, let's watch as he tells the main character to stop staring at him . . .
6,058/50,000 words
Wednesday, November 4
I killed her. Blast it, she's dead! And it was done in COLD BLOOD! And for some reason, I'm rather pleased with myself.
Yes, she was sacrificed in the name of word count. Well, I was actually going to kill her off tomorrow, but I just couldn't wait. I got stuck for a while today, and found myself pacing around my bedroom, trying to figure out what to do. (I also played several games of solitaire on my computer. It's my favorite form of procrastination. I have that I-can't-stop-until-I-win attitude.)
*evil laugh* Now the others will fall like dominoes!
AND! The love interest talked for the first time today. KABLAMO! EXCITEMENT!
8,042/50,000
Thursday, November 5
The story is finally starting to get exciting, and that's making writing so much easier. I kinda figured that would be the case, and I'm glad I was right.
Manny, Devourer of Word Counts continues to do his job. Poor Manny, though. His brother wants to kill him now. Someone's having a bad day.
Well, at least he's gotten a chance to talk to the main character (who vomited today). Isn't that great? (I mean the talking, not the vomit. Don't get your hopes up too high, amigo.) I started running out of words for "throwing up" so I eventually said, "I gave the toilet another gift." Lol! I seriously laughed when I wrote that.
Tee hee.
10,057/50,000 words
Friday, November 6
Eh, today was pretty average. I had hoped to get more done than I actually did, but that's ok. I'm still ahead of pace. I'm thinking about staying up super late tonight, simply because I want to experience writing at 2 AM. That's not weird, is it?
Since I don't really have much to say, here's an excerpt from this week . . .
The toast popped up. Look! It's perkier than I am. I snatched it and spread some butter on it. I walked into the dining room. I realized that I hadn't gotten myself anything to drink, but I didn't really care. There was only one other person in the room, and it was Manny. I froze. I tried not to stare, but I couldn't help myself.
Well, I finally knew what he looked like.
The first thing I noticed about him was his wild hair. It had different shades of brown, and it seemed to be all over the place. I looked past his mane and eventually found his eyes. They were chocolate brown, and they were the deepest eyes I had ever seen. I followed his gaze . . . directly into his bowl of cereal. He didn't look up at me, but he raised an eyebrow. I took a bite out of my toast, wondering if he realized that I was observing him so intently. He interested me, even though he probably would?ve looked rather plain to anyone else. His white t-shirt wasn't going to impress anyone any more than his string bean physique would. I liked how he looked, though.
Just as I thought he was about to go facedown in his cereal, Manny got up and left. I sat alone in the dining room while I finished my toast. I went back into the kitchen. Mrs. Olivarez wasn't there, but I noticed something on the counter. There was a glass of orange juice and a note. I slid it out from underneath the cup and read it.
Please don't stare at me.
-Manny
I wondered if he laughed when he wrote that. I realized that the orange juice was for me, so I drank it. I put the cup in the sink after I finished. I really could have discarded the note, but I kept it. I don't know why . . . it just seemed like the right thing to do.
It's not perfect, but hey, I wasn't expecting anything to be. I still really like this bit for some reason. It's kind of charming.
Well, here's my word count for the week (as of 9 PM) . . .
11,650/50,000
This is madness!
THIS IS NANOWRIMO! *kicks*
Aha there's a gem.
Your resident writing fool,
-7stars
