For NaNo, I settled on writing out a novelization of my ideal Christmas. I have a fairly detailed idea sketched out of what I feel would be the ideal way to celebrate our Savior’s birth, and I came up with four characters (ones that have been with me for awhile) to act it out. Throughout November, I worked at it. I tried to write about 2,000 words a day, but that didn’t work out all the time. Personal things came up half way through the month, and I stopped writing. The little I did write, I didn’t tell the NaNo site, so my word count did not update from the 17th until the 29th. I was then a little under 15,000 words short, and I thought I wouldn’t make it. With prayer and the knowledge that my family believed in me, I stayed up all night on the 29th. I wrote throughout the night, racking up about 10,000 words that night but was running out of words by 7a/8a or so. After church that Sunday the 30th, I took a 4-hour nap and only overslept by an hour. After those few hours of sleep, I was re-engergized, and I wrote nearly 4,000 more words. I made it with 50,094 words! Only about 30 of those words were chapter titles, so I made it!

I won NaNo! (Reaching 50,000 words is the way to win.) This is my first time ever winning. I’m very happy with myself.

The novel itself, I ended up loving more than I thought I would. I picked the idea because it would be easy and I was not attached to it as a plot for a novel, so I would not worry about writing filler and writing just to get to a word count without too much care for the content. However, my happy Christmas story took a dark turn halfway through it. There was a war going on in the background, and it did not stay in the background. The war took a more prominent role as the story progressed, and treason and deaths were introduced. Hence, I don’t think the first half really foreshadows the second. I don’t want it to give away any surprises of course, but it would be nice if the two did not seem like two halves of different plots.

The novel needs work and additions (the last chapter is only about half-written as at that point I was writing to get to 50,000), but that’s all editing. I have a novel write here on my computer, and while I may never try to get it published, I’ve written one. I know I can do it. I even learned things, such as 1,000 words a day is the pace I need to set for my fantasy novel (and others).

Good luck writing!

My favorite genres are science fiction and fantasy, and naturally, many of my ideas have to do with one or both. I’m also a hopeless romantic, so I can’t help it that there’s generally a relationship somewhere in the plot (though it’s generally not the focus). When I was on a huge Law & Order kick (I watched it every single time it was on TNT, and if you know how often they run the show, you can appreciate how big of a kick it was), I even fancied that I was into mystery, murder mystery no less. However, I don’t have the talent for it.

My favorite book series ever is the Pellinor series by Alison Croggon. It tends to wake up my fantasy muses more than any other work. At the momet, I have two big fantasy ideas. They can’t be called real plots or anything, though, as I have no idea what happens. One is set in a fantasy world and follows a couple—though I haven’t decided if they’re married or courting or if their relationship evolves to one of those levels as the story progresses. The other idea is set in the modern world where a normal human stumbles across fantasy beings living in secret in our world, such as going to help a motorcycle accident victim, pulling off the helmet of the victim, and discovering the victim as elf ears, thus throwing the character into this secret world. Much more than that, I don’t know.

Speaking of fantasy, I’ve started my own “scroll” at Dragon Cave, and my dragon eggs need clicks! If it’s not too much trouble, just click on each egg below to help out. Thank you!

One other idea that’s neither fantasy nor science fiction is the idea of a teen novel. I’ve toyed with this before, especially with NaNoWriMo. It chronicles a teen, the summer before she enters college, going through the normal trials and tribulations of a teen novel. However, it’s sort of mocking the novels and how they would probably play if someone were to try them in the real world. It’s meant to be a light-hearted comedy, though.

My ideas come from everywhere and nowhere, but just having an idea doesn’t mean I’ll write anything. I need characters, and the characters need to speak to me about what they’re doing. If any of them speak again, you can be sure that I’ll tell you!