Category / NaNoWriMo

by Gerald Hornsby

NaNoWriMo – how did it go?

The short answer is: not well. After a good start, and being well on course to write 70,000 words for the month (which would have seen another successful NaNo for me), I injured my back.

Not doing something heroic. Oh no. Not skiing down a glacier, or climbing a great peak. No, I injured my back… feeding ducks.

As a result, I could stand, I could lie down, but sitting was too painful for more than 10-15 minutes. I kept going, I tried to stay on track, but I began to fall further and further behind, and ended on the 24th November with just 17,629 words in the project.

If you want to see some of the update videos, I have made a playlist. I tried not to moan too much about my back! LINK HERE: [ NaNo23 Playlist ]

Am I downcast? Maybe a little. Not for spoiling my run of “wins” (my winning streak was up to 14 before 2023). For me, NaNoWriMo is about what it does for me and my writing goals, rather than being an end in itself.

I shall pick up the project again early next year.

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by Gerald Hornsby

NANOWRIMO – the planning (2)

At the end of the last post, I detailed the story beats thus:

Act 1 – opening before investigation, setup, initial enquiries, decision to progress

Act 2A – maybe side story (love interest?), detailed investigation, first obstacle, 

Act 2B – the investigation gets more difficult, MC suffers biggest obstacle, things look bad, oh – hang on…

Act 3 – new impetus, new ideas, closing in on the culprit, knocking red herrings aside, final disclosure, rounding up, return to normality

At this point, I’m eyeing up one of my favourite processes, which is 100% the key to all of my novel writing in the past five years – maybe longer.

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by Gerald Hornsby

NANOWRIMO – the planning (1)

Over the years, I have listened to many authors speaking on their process. It’s always interesting to hear how “the professionals” do it. I remember one author (whose name I have genuinely forgotten) who told a group of aspiring writers that during the editing process, he rewrote his completed manuscripts at least 10 times.

I thought I had misheard.

But no – he wrote, and rewrote, his whole manuscript for each novel at least 10 times.

At the time, I hadn’t published any novels, and I was keen to hear other people’s methodologies. But ten complete rewrites sounded completely bonkers to me. Surely, there was a better, more time-efficient, way?

Indeed there was.

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by Gerald Hornsby

It’s NANOWRIMO time, and I have no choice

NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, comes around at the end of October each year. From a local challenge in San Francisco in 1999, with just 21 participants, it has grown to a global event, with hundreds of thousands of writers joining each year.

As you might expect, with a name like National Novel Writing Month, the idea is to write “a novel” in a single month – the 30 days of November. The actual size of the “novel” is determined as 50,000 words, which means participants need to write an average of 1,667 words per day to be successful in the challenge.

I first heard about this challenge in 2003, and it sounded like fun, so I signed up. And I “won” – the prize being a downloadable certificate and the self-satisfaction of having written a whole bunch of words in a single month.

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by Gerald Hornsby

Publication Day!

One of the few problems with publishing a new book is the need to update websites.
Today sees the day when my updated NaNoWriMo advice book goes live on Amazon in ebook and paperback. It’s been reorganised, rewritten, with new content and a fresh new cover.

Like the two previous versions, I have taken the experiences of 16 previous attempts (succeeding 15 times) and working with and alongside other NaNoWriMo authors, and I’ve created some guidelines, a timeline, tips and advice, and not a little inspiration, too.

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