So there’s this 10 year old Nano challenge that has been in my bookmarks for waaaayyy too long, and every time I participate in Nano I say that I’m going to do it, but never do. So…
The challenge can be found here if you want to participate.
Day One: Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? If so, which years and what end result? If not (or even if so, for that matter), what’s your connection to writing? Why do you want to participate this year?
Day Two – What’s the title of your story? Why did you choose the name you did?
Day Three – Pick one of your female characters. Introduce your readers to her, from her point of view and her words only.
Day Four – What genre is your novel? Why did you pick it?
Day Five – Name two songs from your playlist that you feel are connected with your novel in some way, and explain how they are.
Day Six – What is your one biggest stressor related to forcing yourself to write at least 50,000 words in a span of 30 days?
Day Seven – Where’s your favorite place to hunker down and write?
Answers belowww
Day One:
Have you participated in NaNoWriMo before? If so, which years and what end result? If not (or even if so, for that matter), what’s your connection to writing? Why do you want to participate this year?
I have! I have been a member of the website since 2009. And have been participating since in some form or another, with varying results, and also making the decision to participate in Camp Nano instead of Nanowrimo.
Which is stupid. Because while you can choose your own word count during Camp Nano, I still ended up writing 50.000 words or more. So, just treat Nanowrimo itself like Camp Nano. No pressure!
In Nov. 2013 I decided to participate for realsies with an original story and while the story never saw the light of day, it had been a good exercise. For years I’d been struggling to churn out more than 3000 words for a story, it took me 2 years to write a 40.000 word story, and you know, the more you write, the easier it gets. However, the experience in 2013 laid so much pressure on me that I decided to NEVER AGAIN.
July 2015: I decided to participate in Camp. I wrote on a fanfic called Pandore, and won. 55k words. It’s a Twilight/The Originals story that I tend to write. The story itself has around 75k words, so not bad! This was only my 2nd story in the fandom.
July 2016: Another camp. Wrote something original after I was inspired by something but, while I won with meeting my 20k word count, I struggled hard and the story has been shelved. It had a good idea, it just needs a better execution.
April 2017: Once again used Camp Nano to add words to a fanfic. Twilight/The Originals and called Divine Happenstance. The story eventually grew to 140.000 words.
April 2018: Used Camp Nano to add words to another fanfic called Underground Railroad, this time a Twilight/Teen Wolf story. It eventually grew to 100.000 words.
July 2018: I hosted a big bang event over at a fanfic website and used this Camp to add words to my story Lagniappe. The Vampire Diaries/The Originals. The story grew to 140.000 words.
July 2019/Nov 2019 I had lost some of my writing mojo so I slowed down a little but again, during camp and Nano itself, I met my word count. I worked on a Twilight/White Collar story called Exploit.
I didn’t do anything in 2020 as I was playing FiveM too much LOLOLOL.
This year, I’m using Nanowrimo as a way to catch up with past projects that I started a while ago, or am currently writing, not really starting anything new, I just need those projects DONE. And, if I haven’t met my 50k word count by the end of November, I’ll have to think about starting something new. I guess.
Day 2 – What’s the title of your story? Why did you choose the name you did?
Since I’ll be doing scraps and pulling things together, I’ll just tell you about No Other Lover and Kingdom.
No Other Lover is an original story based on characters from a GTA5 roleplay that I’m doing with a friend of mine. We were both suffering from withdrawals of our characters and since he’s not able to get in the game, I decided to write the characters a little story without the constraints of video game logic and rules of the servers and try to do them justice. With my own twisty twist. The story already has two parts, and I’m going to work on part 3 which should be the final one of that series. The title was chosen because Saul and Lily are… sexy. Obsessive. Hot. Kinky. It’s a sentence from the song “Love is Madness” by Thirty Seconds To Mars & Halsey.
Kingdom is a Twilight/The Originals story, Kol/Bella, and the rating is mature. I started to write this story for a friend, then got sucked into GTA5 roleplay and lost interest in writing altogether but I hate unfinished business. So I’m going to add words, and hopefully finish it. The title was chosen because it can mean separate things; Bella’s fairy kingdom, or the kingdom someone can create for themselves. Or it can mean safety.
If I don’t get to 50k with these two projects, I guess I’ll have to start a new one.
Day 3 – Pick one of your female characters. Introduce your readers to her, from her point of view and her words only.
Hi. I’m Lily. Lily Hades. I grew up as one of the youngest children of my parents, with Ajax and Nester my big brothers. The ones who were praised and treated well. Mom and Dad did everything for them and bent over backwards to make sure they received a good education, and one turned out to become a cop, the other an EMS. It left my older twin sisters, myself and my two younger brothers basically out in the cold and we did everything we could to just make it in life without the support of my parents. My twin sisters are absolutely insane. Psychotic even, and really jealous how I seemingly had my life together while making sure our baby brothers were fed and protected.
When my brothers were old enough to fend for themselves, I disappeared. I didn’t want anything to do with my family anymore, and I certainly didn’t want to die at the hands of my sisters. I caught wind of my brother Raven going missing, so I made it my job to make sure he was safe, and looked for him for years. Nobody could find me, until there was this annoying psychiatrist who reached out to me saying that Ajax and Nester had died and that my younger brother Callum was a mess.
As it turns out, he wasn’t. He was just being Callum, and hating me with a passion for a while like brothers do. When we finally managed to grow back to each other again, Callum killed the psychiatrist, and then got killed himself for killing the psychiatrist and I didn’t feel safe with my last name anymore as everybody just loved the psychiatrist. Including the guy who proposed to me at the local food joint. I mean, Saul was cute and made me feel safe even though I didn’t need it, and I figured, why not?
Stuff happened, Saul left. Without telling me. Heart broken, I allowed myself to be manipulated into another relationship that ended in me having to fake my death. And that’s where we are today…
Jesus Christ, how am I still standing?
Day 4 – What genre is your novel? Why did you pick it?
So I tend to write romance/angst/dark/torture/whump/sex and a whole lot of dark stuff. And for the projects this month it’s no different. And I don’t know why I write this way. I guess I just like it.
Day 5 – Name two songs from your playlist that you feel are connected with your novel in some way, and explain how they are.
Saul and Lily have their own playlist that gets added to when I feel like a song fits them.
Saving Abel – Addicted Both Lily and Saul are addicts. Whether it be to their significant others, drugs, alcohol… pain… Same goes for Thirty Seconds of Mars ft. Halsey – Love is Madness same theme. Basically, Lily wants to crawl inside Saul and just live there.
Day 6 – What is your one biggest stressor related to forcing yourself to write at least 50,000 words in a span of 30 days?
See, I don’t think that you should FORCE yourself to write 50.000 words. If you write, you’re writing. I find myself getting more stressed by HAVING to hit a certain target every day and I find myself purposely finding ways to distract myself and not hit the targets which gives me more stress…
The only stress that I am experiencing right now though is that I have to find a place to live in January. And with the current state of the rental apartments… Yeah. Yikes. Especially because I’m moving with kitty.
Day 7 – Where’s your favorite place to hunker down and write?
I don’t have several places to write. I have a computer, not a laptop. So I sit in my office with my computer. It has two screens so I usually have something up on the second screen to watch or listen to when I’m writing.