NaNoWriMo Day 1

I’m at Borders, and I’m proud to say that I completed my mission of writing 2,000 words today.  In fact, I wrote 2,010.  SHAZAM!

Before I go home, though I feel like I owe my readers a thoughtful blog post and I’m going to need the aid of some wonderful pictures I took with my phone.

One of the reasons that I’m okay with participating in NaNoWriMo when I should really be revising my real manuscript is that I don’t think I have enough experience with writing to know how to revise my current manuscript.  I am therefore, going back up and do some prewriting on my story about Angus while simultaneously prewriting my NaNoWriMo entry.  It might not seem like it, but it’s necessary.

Here’s what I ended up with:

This is the first bit of prewriting I did for NaNoWriMo... it's really different from the story I ended up with.

This is a character web I did for NaNoWriMo that got me feeling UBER motivated with the prewriting.

I mapped out the plot of my November novel on 5 or so pages like this one. I also did 1 page of research that I didn't take a picture of.

Here's my first character map of Angus - the protagonist in my real manuscript.

Finally, I did a character map about Angus (which you may not look at because it has spoilers and I do want to get it published eventually). I will show you this beautiful collage I did on a huge piece of cardboard... for awhile, I thought Angus wasn't complicated enough, but there's a reason for that. Imagine a huge soccer ball obstructing your view of Angus's collage, and you'll have a better idea of who he is 🙂

So, after all that, I actually already feel more prepared to work on my awesome manuscript.  The November novel I’m working on has me pretty jazzed too because it’s giving me an opportunity to try some things out without any pressure.  For example, I’m dividing the book into three parts.  Part 1 is a 1st-person journal entry, part 2 is in 3rd person, and I haven’t decided about part 3 yet.  Also, I’m doing something much darker than a usually do, and there’s even a bit of profanity (shocking profanity even) in part 1. 

I’m Joyous!  Today, the writing plan isn’t set in stone.  I need to run four miles, which will impact how much time I have to write today, so anyone who feels like meeting up should let me know, because I don’t have any plans yet.