Nanowrimo journal, day 1

So today, well … yesterday, was the first day of Nanowrimo, and what a day it was.

I had worked until 10 pm on Halloween, and the way I function, I can’t get to sleep for at least 4 hours after I finish an evening shift. So instead of trying to sleep, I started writing at exactly midnight. I introduced the three main characters, hinted at the main plot, and introduced a major subplot that will affect every book that takes place later in the series. I ended up writing 3,007 words in just under two hours.

I slept until about 10:30, when I immediately continued writing until noon before I finally ate breakfast/lunch. I felt more of a need to write than to eat, which is usual when I’m in the middle of writing a novel. I wrote some more in the afternoon, ending a chapter with an angry “You!” between two of the main characters. Good way to cap a chapter, and an afternoon of writing. At that point, I had written a total of 7,437 words.

For the evening, a bunch of other local participants had a kick-off party. It was a great night, with lots of talks about the dynamics of storytelling, hearing details behind some other peoples’ ideas, and even meeting a few people who have been published. As a writer with aspirations of being published, this was very helpful. That’s not to mention that a lot of the people there tonight seem like great people.

Several people presented that night. A recently published author talked not only of her process behind getting published, but also talked of the editing world. (She’s also a professional editor). The book is called Dragon Whisperer, and her website is at vanessariccithode.iguanabooks.com. The host of the event then talked about the theatre, and some of their upcoming film festivals. The anime festival sounds interesting, even to one who isn’t all that much into anime. He also mentioned their hopes to start a B-Movie festival, which I would totally go to.

And as this is normally a comic blog, I must mention the presentation from a local independent comic writer/artist. She’s working on a series called “Cadaverific” that’s about an accidental resurrection – the best kind of resurrection. I didn’t have time to read the comic as it was passed around, but the art was pretty good. Also, the paper was of much better quality than the big two publishers, not that it’s hard to achieve that feat. You can check out her series at http://www.thebeckacomics.com/

After the party, I wrote a bit more. In just under 24 hours, I wrote 9,806 words. My brain is kind of tired right now. That’s all the Nanowrimo blogging I have the energy for tonight. Next time, I’ll talk about some of the story ideas the other local writers are working on. After that, I’ll finally talk about the series I started writing in January.