So my plan for NaNoWriMo, as promised.
About four years ago or so I wrote a screenplay, but I always thought it would make quite a good novel. It has been my intention to adapt it for years, but other things kept getting in the way (both other writing stuff and other non-writing stuff). No longer.
My goal is to adapt the screenplay this NaNoWriMo. And because I already know the story and such, I am being very ambitious about it. The typical goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50000 words. To put that in perspective, most novels sit in the region of about 80000 to 100000 words, and fantasies (which my story is) are typically more like 100000 to 120000 words. I’m aiming for 120000 words.
In case you’re wondering about the math, that means a lot of writing on a lot of days. 4000 words a day to be precise, although it’s not going to work out quite so neatly as that because of work commitments and suchlike.
Just to note, I say I’m aiming for 120000 words, but I’ve no idea if the story will translate into a 120000 word book. I think it will, roundabout, but if it ends up with less, great, means less to write and my goal will be just to finish it. If it ends up with more I’ll still aim to finish it, but 120000 is already an insane goal.
Oh, and when I say finish it, I’m just talking about the first draft. It’s not going to be gold straight out of the box, you know.
I’m fairly confident about hitting my goal, or at least coming close to it. I’ve done a very similar thing before. When I wrote the bulk of my other novel (the one I’ve mentioned before that’s still somewhere in the rewrite stage) I wrote something like 90000 words in about five weeks, and that was practically from scratch. I knew the rough story and I just sort of rolled with it, really getting into the flow of writing (I managed 17000 words in a single weekend at one point).
In case it isn’t already clear at this point, I tend to find writing easiest when I’m thinking about it in terms of words. I think that’s part of the reason I struggle with rewriting, because you can’t approach it the same way. But I’ll talk about that at a later point. For now, what’s relevant is that each day over the course of my NaNoWriMo I’m going to update this blog with my word count (and any other tidbits if they’re interesting), a day in arrears. So it’ll start on Wednesday, with Tuesday’s count, and go on from there, until I either hit my goal or run out of November.
I think I’ve covered everything. Now all that I have left to do is get a good night’s sleep and then bloody well get on with it.
Keep an eye out for the first word count update.