Novelist
Sunday, May 22, 2011
I decided to sign up for National Novel Writing Month.
In November, I am going to spend my month turning out at least 30,000 words of story. Following that, I am going to edit and re-write what I come up with in an attempt to actually sell a novel.
If that fails, I will do it again the following year and use the time in between to learn about how to edit, re-write and market a book.
Why?
Because I want to at least try.
In the mean time, I plan to finish the short stories I have rattling around in my head.
Edit\: fifty thousand words. Oh.
Fifty thousand.
OK. That's...one thousand six hundred and sixty six point six recurring words a day.
I can still do that. Totally.
1 comments:
I've done it three times and found it very useful - would have been even more useful if I'd had the time to edit and rewrite after, of course. The basic rule to follow is to not edit yourself in any way. Just sit down and let your mind splurge onto the page and throw in every detail of the story that you can think of. Follow every digression and loose end that comes up, make infodumps and grand expository scenes and dialogue your friends and don't try to force the story where you think it ought to be going.
I've discovered very interesting things about all three stories I've tried - the first was being told from the point of view of the wrong character, the second has some very interesting secondary characters who don't want to be confined to sub plots and the third just doesn't work currently - but the whole experience of doing it is worthwhile, whatever you discover at the end.
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