The Ramblings of my Disorganised Mind

NaNoWriMo, surprisingly

I mentioned NaNoWriMo in a previous post, but for anyone who hasn't seen (or couldn't be bothered looking for) said previous post, it's National Novel writer's Month right now. Basically, the brief is to write 50,000 words of a first draft (no editing allowed) in a month. In a 30 day month. That's... uh... an average of... forget it, I'll get my calculator... 1666.66666666666666666666 (repeater) words per day. I guess I'll settle for 1666 a day and 1667 words every 3 days or so. hehe.

I had absolutely no intention of doing it this year. My 12 year-old (who was then 11) and I did it last year and he beat me 20,000 words to 0. However, I was lying in bed last night, musing over my terrible gothic poetry (hehe) and an idea that has been running around my brain for the last month or so suddenly coalesced and BAM! 4,000 words.

So guess what, ma, I'm writing a new novel. :-D

And it has nothing whatsoever to do with my current project.

Umm, for the record, that's ms pages, not MSWord count. For the uninitiated, ms pages are based on spaces (actually figures, but that includes spaces) per page not the exact number of actual words. The reason for this is that an editor is more interested on how much paper it will take to create any given book, or how much space in the periodical a short story will take. So, one ms page, written in 12-pt Courier, double spaced, with 1 inch margins, and paras indented, is considered to be representative of "250 words". There probably won't be 250 actual words on that page (there could be, if the author is prone to long descriptive paras, but that's not me at all, I tend to have two talking heads with very little scenic reference in my first drafts), but that's the way it is. there could be as few as 100 words on a "250 word" ms page.

So, what's the book about? Well, I'm not actually sure. I have a vague idea, but I'm sure it will come to me as I go. This time, I really do have a sense of scene, and I expect it to be rather dark, a wee bit different from my usual fluff. But we'll see.

Wish me luck.

I'll probably need it.

posted by Heather @ 9:20 am