Post-Nano Thoughts

So I wrote for Nanowrimo in November.  Sort of.

As you may recall, I planned to continue a story I had already started writing, in fact, one I had already tried to Nano once (back in 2015).  I first had to convert all the hand-written pages to computerese.  This took rather more time than I had thought it would, partly due to lousy handwriting (even I can't read my own writing), partly due to lousy storage resorting in blocks of text being mostly erased, and partly due to the fact that I am really, really lazy.  It took me, in fact, until November 15th to actually start writing new text.

That pretty much guaranteed I wasn't going to win, so it couldn't have worked out better if I had done it on purpose.  I still managed to write about 1200 words a day.  The busiest day was November 19th, with 1631 words; the least busy was probably November 25th, with 388 words.  My total words for the 15 days I wrote were 15 614 words.  This not only doubled the length of the manuscript, it also set a new personal record for Nano, as  previously I wrote 12 279 words (that was 2017).

One of the reasons for the slow-down in the middle (a three-day period November 24-26) was that I was hit with a surprise romance sub-plot (okay, it wasn't that much of a surprise) and decided to include a somewhat explicit sex scene.  You know, to stretch my writerly muscles, leave my comfort zone, that sort of thing.  And when I look back at it, you know, it was really pretty terrible.  The best news is that no one but me will ever read it.  Should I ever show the manuscript to anyone else, I will make sure to delete that scene first.  Of course, first I would have to finish it.  There seems little risk of that.

So, yeah.  That was my NaNoWriMo for 2018.  I don't do well with goals that require a certain number of words per day; I do better with a certain amount of time spent writing per day.  My goal now is to write for 15 minutes each day.

The People Have Spoken!

The poll to determine which genre I should fail to finish in this year's Nanowrimo is now closed, and the overwhelming winner was . . . (drum roll, please!) . . . Space Opera!!!

So I have decided to try to finish the one space opera story I seem to have in me:  the one I started back in 2004.   "But," I hear you say, "this is a story that you have already done who knows how many words of.  Isn't that cheating on Nano?"

Yea.  Yes it is.  Next question?

"But you've already written who knows how many words!  Is there any doubt you will finish it?"

Trust me, I can fail to finish this one big time.  I've been sitting on it since 2004, after all, and  haven't finished it in 14 years.  Moreover, I tried using this one for Nano back in 2015 and then I wrote . . .  hang on, this is tough math . . .  a grand total of . . .  zero words.  So trust me, I can do this.

So my only prep for this is to make sure I have all the original pages translated from (badly) handwritten to recorded on the word-processor of my choice -- What?  Oh, yes.  You in the back.

"What if you finish the story in less than 50 000 words?"

I don't think you've seen how far I can drag a story out, given the motivation.  I'm sure I can get 50k out of what plot is left (to be honest, the action hasn't even started.  It might never).  But, should the story actually get finished in fewer words than I need, I have a few options.  One is that I can just take it as a loss (but just quitting feels wrong.  For my pride, if for no other reason, I ought to fail due to my own incompetence).  Another is to write something else to fill in the gaps, and to be honest, I have an idea in the back of my head, inspired by, of all things, a line in a Ron Sexsmith song.  So we'll see.

Help Me to Help you to help me to . . . wait, I'll come in again.

It is now October, and Nanowrimo is only one month away.  

As ever, I plan to enter Nano this year, and as ever, I will fail to finish. But since I failed to finish last year due to not being prepared enough, this year I want to prevent that. But before I can do any prep or worldbuilding or anything, I need to decide which genre I will fail at. Help me out! Take the poll below!

Please select one or more choices, up to four, and list them in the comments.  If you do choose more than one, please rank your choices from 1 (the genre or subgenre you would most like to see me fail to finish Nanowrimo with) to 4 (the one you would least like to see me fail to finish Nanowrimo with). Management retains the option to ignore all suggestions. Void where prohibited by law. Burma Shave.

The choices are:

Urban Fantasy

Romantic Urban Fantasy

Heroic Fantasy (typified by Conan)

High Fantasy (typified by Tolkien)

Space Opera

Horror

Mystery

Urban Fantasy Mystery

Romantic Urban Fantasy Mystery

Other (your choice)