I’ll just out and say this, right here right now, at the start of this guest blog post; This is my first year doing NaNoWriMo. Yes, I’m a new author. A newbie. A n00b. Whatever you want to call me. I may not be new to writing, but I most certainly am new to the NaNo way of life, and let me tell you something; I’m scared.
But I know I’m not alone.
There is a plethora of new writers joining NaNo for the first time this year, and they’re scared too. Hell, even writers who have been doing this for 5 years get scared when November is only a turn on the calendar away. The point is, it’s okay to be scared. It’s good to be scared! If I wasn’t scared, I wouldn’t have found “The One”.
What’s that sorry? My partner? God no! Why are you talking about them?! No, no no no. “The One” is my story. My “winning idea”. The one that stuck out in my head and yelled at me to write 50,000 words on it.
That’s scary, isn’t it? 50,000 words in 30 days. And of course, the magic number is 1,666. That’s the amount of words, minimum, that you have to write each day if you want to reach 50,000 words by the end of November. If you’re a family person not wanting to write on weekends, you need to write a minimum of 2,400 words a day. That’s scary.
That’s the point of writing, of embarking on a new adventure; it’s scary.
As authors, we can plan our little hearts out. We can write each detail, both significant and insignificant, about each character meticulously. We can describe settings right down to the tiniest snowflake on the smallest kitten. We can plan plan plan until we can’t plan anymore, but we never truly know our stories or novels. Not before we’ve started them, at least.
Writing a novel is a learning curve for an author. We never TRULY know our characters or our plots or anything like that. Why? Because out characters take us there. Not us, we don’t decide how a story is going to go, we’re just the trained computer monkeys who bow to the incessant urge to write down what the tiny little people in our heads are doing. That’s by no means at all an insult; it’s very much a compliment. We have the ability to do something that non-writers can’t do; harness our imagination. We can listen to and heed what the little people are saying because we write it down. And that’s the beauty of writing.
Back to my original point though, I found “The One”. My plot might not be original, it may not be one of those “never done before” ideas, but it IS mine. No plot is original in the long run, pretty much everything has been done before; the key to making it something worth reading is making it YOURS. Nobody else’s, YOURS.
My plot revolves around a psychopath. It involves abuse, drugs, alcohol, murder, rape, torture – but it’s not what you think. It’s not just going to be a bloody, brutal massacre of the English language, so to speak. It’s a psychological thriller, essentially. My synopsis is pretty good, if I do say so myself. You can read that on my blog.
But what makes it MY plot is the fact that I’ve entailed my own ideas and twists. Psychological thrillers have been done over and over, both in books and movies. But it’s still one of the most popular subjects to read/watch because it’s such an open-ended topic. And that’s what you want to be looking for. That gap in the market where one tiny little detail in your novel will make it different from the rest.
I’m by no means a professional author. I’m not even close. But I do know one thing; you have to enjoy what you’re writing. It WILL show through your words. If you’re bored of the topic, that’ll show too. Just make your novel your own. Let it take you somewhere awesome.
Don’t be scared to just let your imagination fly.
Have you found 'the one' yet? Are you ready to stick with it for the duration?
Have you found 'the one' yet? Are you ready to stick with it for the duration?
Panda (@pandrawr) is a strange 21 year old student from the UK. She goes by this name because she doesn’t like her real name, not even a tiny bit. She began writing at the tender age of 6, writing short silly stories for her father. She went on to write a ton of poetry, but has now decided that there is a deep, dark novel in her, waiting to be blasted out for all the world to see. She enjoys music, driving and spending time with her boyfriend, but most of all, because she is a Panda, she (naturally) enjoys sleeping for long periods of time mostly. You can also find her tweeting, blogging, and NaNo-ing her heart out.
