{"id":638,"date":"2016-12-12T12:54:24","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2016-12-12T12:54:24","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:54:24","slug":"winner-winner-chicken-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/12\/winner-winner-chicken-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Winner, winner, chicken dinner."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>No, I don\u2019t know what it means, either. And I don\u2019t like the term \u201cwinning\u201d when it relates to NaNoWriMo. It\u2019s very binary, and I think we\u2019ve had enough binary decisions this year. If there is a winner, then there must be a loser, and losing has such bad connotations for those who can\u2019t deal with it.<\/p>\n

But, the bottom line is, I completed the NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words in a month challenge. What did I write?<\/p>\n

Well, one of the things I advocate about NaNoWriMo is to use it to experiment with your writing. At the end of November, even if you write 50,000 words, it\u2019s unlikely that the so-called \u2018novel\u2019 will be in any fit state to progress. More than likely, it will be a very rough draft, a collection of half-finished ideas, loosely held together by crossed fingers and prayers. This year, I decided to try and write a cozy mystery. In my \u2018day writing\u2019, I write crime fiction, and cozies are hot, apparently, so I thought I\u2019d give it a go.<\/p>\n

In short, I failed to finish one story. I knew who the culprit was, and how they exposed him, but my story had veered off the (very rough) plan I had produced, and as I approached the end of the book, I could see where I was, and where I wanted to be (the proposed ending) were miles apart. Should I rewrite the ending, or bludgeon through, fighting my way back from where I was, to where I wanted to be?<\/p>\n

In the end, I did neither. In the interests of writing lots of words, I paused the first book, and started the second, where the words flew from my fingers, with over 4,000 words on the last day, finishing on a total of 51,204 words. Some might say that starting a second novel was cheating, or that it would make me a NaNo Rebel. IHowever,\u00a0 <\/span>would have had to write those words on Book 2 sometime anyway. Why not write them in November and get them counted into the NaNoWriMo total? Which is what I did.<\/p>\n

So, now we\u2019re already at the 12th of December, what is my roundup on my NaNoWriMo writing?<\/p>\n

I love my stories, and I love my characters. They\u2019re not deep enough yet, but on the surface, they\u2019re interesting enough. Things have moved on since the days of Miss Marple, and these days, us writers are expected to write fully rounded characters.<\/p>\n

In the short term, I have podcasts to record, books to read for book clubs, a minor health issue to sort, and Christmas meals and parties to attend. But I shall be returning to my cozies, and I shall finish Draft Zero of Book 2, before returning to Draft Zero of Book 1, with updated character information, smoother plot, and a general redrafting of the story. These will be published during 2017. I\u2019m making that commitment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, I don\u2019t know what it means, either. And I don\u2019t like the term \u201cwinning\u201d when it relates to NaNoWriMo. It\u2019s very binary, and I think we\u2019ve had enough binary decisions this year. If there is a winner, then there must be a loser, and losing has such bad connotations for those who can\u2019t deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5y3CH-ai","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}