Well, here we are back at 1 November again. You all know what that means – it’s time for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo (this still sounds like some kind of fantasy beast from the African plains) is all about making yourself (and your family) insane for thirty days as you frantically try to get 50,000 words down on paper in one month. Theoretically, those words create an actual novel.
I did it last year. 64K in thirty days. Those words became the rough draft of Saving Emily. It took several months of edits, beta reader comments, rewrites, and enough curse words to fill up several swear jars before Saving Emily was ready to go. The outline, timeline, and synopsis had been useful, but as always the story led me where it wanted to go. Saving Emily eventually wound up being about at 72.5K words and I’m extremely proud of this book.
So what’s the plan for this year? I’m not sure. I have no outline, timeline, synopsis, or anything else. What I have is a germ of an idea. Once again, I’ll be writing out my butt since I think my hero is in a career field (non-military and non-law enforcement) that I know nothing about. But he’s a guy, there’s a girl, there will be cops, border patrol agents, murder, contract killers, illegal immigrants, horses, dogs, a cat, a musical instrument, and a kitchen sink.
I’ll post random updates as I go. My goal this time is the word count of 50K, not the completion of the novel. This one will take a little longer, but NaNoWriMo will give me a really good start on the novel.
Now if I only had a name for my hero…
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