NaNo 2019 - Tumblr Posts

Questions for you:

I’ve been writing since sometime in middle school (~7th grade), about 14 years ago. However, I only began writing actual stories in high school – about 11 years ago. Wow… has it really been that long? I typed up my first Harry Potter fanfiction almost 10 years ago, so the numbers check out – despite my disbelief!

Whenever I start developing a new project, it’s almost always about the characters, or a nifty plot idea. Functionally abandoned Harry meets heavily handicapped incognito Voldemort; Cloud has to deal with Sephiroth; Harry reincarnating in Naruto land; Loki is stuck with a de-aged Tony; a depressed person is thrust into Undertale… I think it’s a result of reading so much fanfiction when I started really writing, but the characters always remain a driving force. (Also those were stories I wrote from 2010- 2017, in case you’re interested ;)

My favorite part of the writing process is when my subconscious and the characters take over, and I’m just along for the ride. It just feels so incredible, and it generally comes out far more naturally, so I’m always pretty happy with it!

Fluff and angst are my bread and butter, when it comes to what genres I normally write. Fantasy is my one true genre love – although I enjoy reading sci-fi, I’m not one for reading it.

Sadly, I write in pretty boring places – my desk, against the side of my bed, furiously and surreptitiously scribbling down notes while at work… I actually hiked up a nearby mountain to try to write once, but I was too exhausted by the time I made it up the trail. Whoops! 

Questions for NaNo:

I have participated in NaNo before! There’s just… nothing to show for it. Enough said.

I hoped that joining NaNo would give me a solid deadline to work with – I kept putting off actually writing the story, and I work best with a concrete deadline. Sadly, I ended up just overwhelming myself and freaking out after writing only a page.

Honestly, I’m still more nervous than excited, but I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to share my work! I really love the characters I’ve created for my story, and I want other people to see and love them as well.

That said, I’m still nervous about actually being able to do this, getting caught up in my own head, falling into a self-defeating puddle…

But… I think I’ve prepared a bit better this year! I have a better sense of the world and a few key points figured out, I’ve come up with a general overarching outline and a slightly more detailed first half outline. It’s still pretty wide open, but solid framework to rely on. I’m more of a planster, in that I need some framework but I don’t want to preplan out every detail 100 pages before I get there. My most important prep, however, was on my mentality.

I worked out several possible word plans to reach the golden 50,000 word goal. One for writing everyday, one for writing only on my days off, one for a reduced wordcount on my workdays and more on my days off, and one where I incrementally increased my wordcount per day as the month goes on. It is my hope that, even should I fumble and flail about like prior year’s attempts, I can see that there’s still a way to my goal – or a way to readjust the goal posts accordingly.

 Questions for my WIP:

My project is titled ‘Fractured Reality’! It spent a little while going by ‘Void of Reality’, before I went back to my original idea. (You can recognize it by looking at my NaNo project name from 3 years ago… yes. It is the same project, take two.)

Inhales a deep breath… Okay! So, Fractured Reality is a fantasy adventure story, taking place in a land slightly sideways to our own reality! The world and country are both named Vera – there’s no leaving the country, as physics get wobbly and you end up back where you came from – so the inhabitants think that their land is the only land. This isn’t really a problem – what is a problem is the rips in their land, where a kind of tear in the fabric of reality  is letting out distortions, changing the nearby land and disgorging strange monsters.

Our protagonists are a group of young adults – adventurers, slowly traversing the countryside and completing quests in an attempt to help make the land they live in safer. In the process, they uncover the origins of the fractures and the hidden history of their land, and why there are three distinct sapient races: Batell, the badger folk; Uraja, the jaguar people; and the Humans – occasionally known as the Humalts.

Valorie is the main protagonist and our PoV character. Despite difficulties with her memories due to an intentional magical mishap, she’s the driving force behind the eventually close-knit group. Tyra, a princess going incognito in order to better serve when her father passes her the throne, helps Val get started and then stays strong by her side. Ilan, an Uraja who has difficulties with people, joins them and brings his shy, adorable self to the party. Darim, a Batell and the oldest of the four at 24, was inspired to a life of protection when his older sister’s girlfriend help save their lives from a Voidling attack.

Honestly, I could keep going all day, but I’ll leave it there for now and just thank you for reading! I’ve been planning this for so long, and I know so many in-depth details of really odd backstory fragments, and I just can’t wait to show them all! …And then cut my darlings out later, to be gathered into their own little compendium of side scenes :3

NaNoWriMo Support Group

Hi everyone! Welcome to week one of the NaNo support group and Show and Tell. During NaNoWriMo, we will be posting opportunities to see how you’re going with your project, promote your wip, and join a community of supportive participants. If you would like to participate/be tagged and aren’t on our participants list, you can join up via our NaNoWriMo Participants Masterlist.

(Note: we’ve had a bit of trouble with a few urls. Please make sure to type your url correctly, and at the bottom of the list.)

Our Show and Tell posts will posit a few questions about your writing process, how you’re going, and give you an opportunity to showcase your favourite bits through short excerpts. You can reblog this post, or repost your answers, and please tag us!

As this is day/week one, most of us haven’t written much yet (if any!) so our questions are about you! There are a lot of questions here, please don’t feel obliged to answer them all. As much or as little detail as you would like.

Questions for you:

How long have you been writing?

When you start a project, how do you start? With character, setting, plot, aesthetic, something else?

What’s your favourite part of the writing process?

What genres do you write?

Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever written?

Questions for NaNo:

Have you participated in NaNo or camp NaNo before?

What made you decide to join up?

What are you most excited about/looking forward to?

Anything you’re a bit nervous about?

Have you done a lot of preparation? Or none whatsoever?

Do you have a workspace, schedule, or daily goal?

Questions for your wip:

What’s your NaNo wip titled (if it has one)?

Tell us a bit about your NaNo wip! For example the plot, genre, themes…

What is your protagonist like?

Have you been planning it for a while? Conversely, do you know anything about it yet?

Want to keep track of your word count? Try these spreadsheets:

NaNo Word Count Tracker (nice and colourful and simple to use)

Multi-Project Year Word Count Tracker (keeps up to four projects)

NaNoWriMo Report Card (with cool pie charts and graphs)

Best wishes to everyone, and remember that, while everyone is excited and enthusiastic, NaNo is voluntary, and your well-being comes first.

Love from the Mods at The Writeblr Archives x

(Tag list below the cut)

Keep reading

NaNoWriMo Approaches

AKA the most fun you will have while being constantly stressed for 30 days, repeatedly asking yourself, “Why on Earth am I doing this to myself? What have I done? Why did I think this would be fun?” all for bragging rights that you wrote a whole ass book in 30 days.