Well, That was Traumatic! NaNoWriMo 2014 Review.

Last night I won NaNoWriMo 2014 with less than two hours to spare.  Today I am doing the same things as every other winner.

Laundry.

No, it’s not a rule that your whole life must go to the dogs while you work feverishly on your manuscript. Strictly speaking, my house was no less slovenly that it usually is–complete with the snowdrift of clothes across the bedroom floor.  Though I don’t remember cleaning the toilet this month.  Usually I’d do that once or twice.

Did that now.

The Youngest of Immortals has been birthed.  I’ve spent the month with a brand new cast of characters that were actually trapped in my head for a number of years.  I outlined some of the themes of this story in “Going AWOL and Writing a Book,” but essentially, this is first book in a series of stories about Jack, the youngest member of a secret society of Immortal people.  Jack has never come to grips with the curse of being Immortal, and now his wife, his last link to his former mortal life, is about to die of cancer.

Jack is a death addict.  He cannot die, but he can come very, very close before he ‘rebounds’ and death spits him back out.  He gets a drug-like rush from that near-fatal experience, and a few hours of peace before he wakes up to reality.

This is where Alannah and Alexander, both members of the Society of Immortals, find him.  The question is, now that Jack knows he isn’t alone in his immortality, will he have the courage to make a new life for himself or will he chase death to the end?

Jack is a bit of a loser and I enjoyed writing him.  He says the stupidest things, and constantly pokes at and offends Alannah, despite the fact that she’s one of the only people left who cares whether he lives or dies.  It is clearly a defence mechanism, but if you take what he says at face value, it’s hilarious.  I hope I’m not the only one who will think so.

People showed up who weren’t supposed to show up.  A woman who was supposed to be an incidental character wound up being this femme fatal… that’s about all I can say about that.  I was writing from an outline, but you can never plan for everything.  Stories take on lives of their own.

In the last four days of NaNoWriMo, I raced to the finish by writing about 15,000 words.  Thank God I’d booked time off of work, because in the two weeks prior, life got a bit crazy.  Heck, I got a bit crazy (a subject for another post.  Suffice to say, there was a meltdown).  I went for days without writing.

To make matters worse, my outline was too short.  I had to go back and drum up scenes to extend the novel past the 50,000 word mark.  50,000 words is still too short, in my mind, but as I finish the series I expect to find material to add in.

And I still had time to go Christmas shopping–Black Friday and all.

There was also time to learn something new.  Last year I learned about the UFC.  This year I leaned how to run on a treadmill.  At the beginning I was all scared, but I did NOT fall off the treadmill.  I successfully learned to run on a treadmill, and have now completed two 10K’s as well as a number of shorter workouts.

Running full tilt while watching Criminal Minds is an experience, I’ll tell you.

I have successfully joined the ranks of the gym rats, and the NaNoWriMo 2014 winners.  Cheers!

 

 

 

Going AWOL and Writing a Book

Hey Friends,

It’s November, and here in Manitoba, the weather has caught up.  There is snow, and thus we are launched into our 4-6 months of winter.  But I don’t mind, because I probably won’t see daylight until December.

It’s NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month.  Writers all over challenge themselves to write a novel of not less than 50,000 words in length.  This has been in progress for a week now, so blogging has not been a priority.  It won’t be until NaNo is done.

What am I Writing?

I am very excited to begin a trilogy, which falls roughly into the genre of urban fantasy, but with immortal humans instead of demon-slayers, vampires and werewolves.  The protagonists are Jack, the youngest of the Immortals who in this first book has yet to come to grip with the burden of living on while everyone else dies.  He compulsively tries to die, if only to get as close to death as possible before rebounding back to life.  The other protagonist is Alannah, an immortal Holocaust survivor who teaches history and hides from society as much as possible.  Another key figure is Alexander, a seven-hundred and some year old former knight.

Meanwhile, Alannah fights the fear that someone is stalking her–perhaps someone from her past?  Jack resists Alannah and Alexander’s attempts to assimilate him into the secret Immortal society, meanwhile battling increasing self-hatred as he cannot keep his promise to his late wife that he would stop harming himself.

Once again, I find myself writing on dark themes.  In We are the Living I wrote on themes such as PTSD, loss of hope and loss of loved ones, and finding reasons to live when the life you knew has been destroyed–all against the backdrop of a post zombie apocalyptic Italy.

This story deals with self-harm and addiction, and finding the courage to chase after a life-purpose.  As the series unfolds, their will be a thread about the consequences one bad choice can have.  And there will be romance, because I can’t seem to go without it.

This book won’t be released until well into 2015, as there is a SciFi novel in the queue before it.

Coffee and Lots of It

I’ve written about 20,000 words now–more before I go to bed at 1:00 am tonight.  🙂  This is all fuelled by copious amounts of coffee.

How do you know you are drinking too much coffee, exactly?  One clue: I became wide awake this morning when I heard my sister pouring the beans into the grinder.  No lying in bed for me, oh no.

I also have decaf, so if need be I can drink it right to the end!  The other day all the caffeinated coffee was gone, and I had nothing but decaf all day.  I was concerned I might be going into withdrawal.

And while I drink coffee and write, I have Spotify on a continuous stream of contemplative (read: depressing) indie and folk music.

Oh yes, and tomorrow I’m going to run on a treadmill for the first time.  I am not excited.  But maybe I can take my coffee and my laptop with me and write, drink and listen to Spotify while running.  Worth a shot, no?

So if I don’t post for a few weeks, it’s because I’m off writing like a madwoman… or I flew off the treadmill and am confined to a body cast.

Off Into the NaNoverse, or Happy Trails Until We Meet Again.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, the month in which thousands of crazies who call themselves writers embark on a quest to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Insane? Oh yes.

I didn’t even consider the possibility until about six weeks ago. I was like “No, I can’t possibly. I don’t have time.” and then I was like “But I have this idea. Maybe if I plan it out?” And once I started on the possibility thinking train, well, things just snowballed. So, here I am, with much fear and trepidation, on November first.

By a turn of luck called “talking to the supervisor at the right time”, or by God’s blessing, or both, I have the day off. So, last night I jacked myself up on coffee and stayed up until the clock struck twelve. Whereupon I pulled out my trusty MacBook and started a new document, put it in the right format, and wrote the opening line. An hour later I had 1740 words and I decided to quit while I was ahead.

This morning i wrote some more, and now I’m at 3491 words.

But all days won’t be like today because, face it, I work two jobs. So, the blog is going to have to wait until NaNo is done. If you’re curious what I’m up to, or how I’m doing, like Children of the Words on Facebook, or follow @GeralynWichers on Twitter. I’ll see you in a month. Maybe, if I’m lucky, my sanity will still be intact!