NaNoWriMo – I blame Jen Williams

So, where have I been for the last month?

Well, after handing back edits to the delicious Natasha Bardon at Harper Voyager, I plunged headlong into drafting book two. Then Jen Williams of The Copper Cat trilogy fame convinced me to do NaNo (national novel writing month for those who don’t know) while I was drafting. It would keep me on track.

I already had about 40,000 words, but I thought hey, why not? So I committed to NaNo and got to another 38,000 in the first three weeks – yep, really – and Natasha sent back the first part of my final edits…

So. Close. to winning NaNo, but now I have edits! Arghh, what to do? Well, the edits, obviously. Doing what my editor tells me is always wise. So I worked on polishing Godblind.

But.

I kept a running total of how many edits I made, and I may have included how many words I deleted as well, and I added that to my NaNo total. I wanted those 50,000 words in 30 days. Jen had talked me into it, and I wasn’t going to let her down! She has no idea what she unleashed…

So yesterday, NaNo deadline day, I added up the words I’d written on book two and the words I’d added (and in some cases deleted) on Godblind, and I got to 50,275. So I plugged that into my NaNo dashboard, and it said I’d won.

Who am I to argue with technology?

So yes, it was a bit of a cheat and perhaps I fudged the numbers a little, but as far as I’m concerned, I won NaNo. What’s more important, of course, is what I learnt during November.

• Authors have an uncanny ability to talk me into stuff I probably shouldn’t commit to. This is going to get me into all sorts of trouble when I hit the conventions next year to promote Godblind.
• Editors are wise, mysterious forces who can see things like plot and the places where you’re just writing filler because you know you need a scene there but you don’t know what to put in it.
• I can write 38,000 words in three weeks.

Two of these things are good. The jury’s out on the other.

Currently reading: The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Currently watching: The Flash latest season (what number’s that? 4?)

Currently listening: The Last Hero, Alter Bridge