Preparations begin for NaNoWriMo
It is just over one month left until this year’s big writing adventure begins. I’m thinking about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month as it is acutally called. I’ve never entered before, but I’ve thought about it a couple of times. First it was too close to my final exams, then work was to busy during November, then some other random excuse was fabricated to justify why I didn’t enter.
This year I’ve decided to give a try. I’ve always loved reading books, and writing has always facinated me. My fiction writing urge used to be filled by planning roleplaying characters or sessions, but even when doing that I’ve always wanted to write a real novel – or at least a short story. The biggest hinderance to me actually writing that novel of mine has been that I never write any fiction, the stories always stays firmly locked in my head. Coming up with other stuff to fill the time has always been too easy. The plan now is that Nanowrimo will give me that extra inspiration I need to get started.
In anticipation of Nanowrimo I’ve already start to write a little bit each day. At least a sentence or two to get used to structuring my story ideas on paper. To begin with it took a lot of energy to sit down and get those sentences down, but lately it has been easier and easier. It has even gotten to the point wher I can’t just write two sentences, once I start writing I can see how the story should continue so I just have to write down the next bit as well.
That feeling of creating a story is amazing. Especially when you don’t really know what twist and turns it will take next, you just know the general direction it is going. Earlier I always found that a bit strange, how could a writer not know what was going to happen in advance? He was writing the story after all! But now that I’ve experience a little bit of it I start to see it, and appriciate the joy that it brings to writing. Giving your characters and setting enough life so that they can actually make descisions on their own. The latest example of that was when the main character in my story was going to visit his uncle. I thought he was going to live in an old appartment building, but once I started to write it felt much better for him to live in an old house just outside of the city center. A minor change, but still something I didn’t anticipate until the words had been written.