Last month during National Novel Writing Month I to write a 50,000 word novel decided. My novel began as follows:
My name is Russ. I'm a journalism student and I didn't expect to be in prison. Took me to a police station squat and parked in my ass in an interrogation room. Took my phone, so I don't know exactly how long I've been sitting here. Is a mirror on the wall in front of me and I try to catch a glimpse of movement behind it.
Maybe I should back up. I can't believe that started all this with a USB thumb drive.
I determined the novel to a technothriller but this is to write the joy in a book where it takes, you see. It took me to a hacker's den in Washington, D.C. for part of the story. But it guided me through a discussion of file formats for government documents. Go figure.
Also took my best friend from high school and you're done. My wife wrote to 50,000 words. So I was happy to discover a huge secret of writing: find a writing buddy. It was humbling and motivating to write with my friend. Humiliating, because he read, he wrote, and he is a better writer than I am. Motivating, because I knew he would be waiting to read what I wrote too. It was tremendous fun to compare notes and follow the progress of my friend while we suffered the challenge together.
I wrote my entire novel in a single document in Google Docs, and it worked great. In fact, it worked better than great. I added links in quite a few posts so that a reader can immerse themselves something deeper. If I, wanted to insert a picture, it was easy. If I wanted to throw that appeared on a computer screen in text I could change on a monospaced font to terminal. I felt much safer me know that the novel was backed up in the cloud instead of sitting on a local hard drive that easily could fail.
My best friend uses Google Docs to, and a few times we both had to open a document at once. I could see his cursor and watch him write text in real time. We used the feature "Comment" leaving jokes or encouragement in each of the other doc. I was really pleased with Google Docs for writing my novel: A +++++ business would do again.
I learned the value of an Act outline, mainly because I don't have. I started with a vague idea from my property and I knew that the ending I wanted. I wrote until I on my end and * manure * I was only 1/4th the way to 50,000 words. So I kept my original ending go and it turned out fine. But the next time I write a novel, perhaps a bit more about the plot will probably before I start.
According to the official website 37,479 people "won" national novel writing month by writing at least 50,000 words. Congratulations to the successful novelists, and all the 200,530 people the contact this challenge! This 30 day challenge was definitely one of the hardest, I tried. To write a 50,000 word novel in a month making 1,667 words per day. Every day, would I go to sleep until I wrote my word count for that day. For me at least one took, hour and 40 minutes, every day, and usually more than two hours every day. I stayed until 1 or 2 many nights in November. But on November 29th I finished and I'm really glad I did. I make one this month easily 30-day challenge ("learn a new word a day"), to recover.
I arranged things so that my novel only after 50,000 word mark wrapped up, but my friend is still ahead. My last word count according to the NaNoWriMo website was 50,035 words (according 50,675 words to Google Docs). I'm glad that I this challenge because now, I'm a writer.
I am about whether to read the doc up for all to open smart. It has all the normal warts and patches of any first novel, plus a few extra. Part of me wants quite enforce and make it a real physical book on Lulu, or maybe it make an e-book, only to learn, how this process works. We will see. May be the a further 30 day challenge.
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