NaNoWriMo 2011

So, this was the fourth year I've participated in NaNoWriMo.  (If you have no idea what I'm talking about: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/faq/how-nanowrimo-works )

I found out about it in a magazine article on Nov. 3, 2008.  I can remember the date because, after talking about it with C that night, I started writing on Nov 4th, with the prayer that starting four days late wouldn't knock me out of the race.  I wrote frantically, using the only idea I had in mind at the time: an LDS romance.  It was the story of a BYU freshman who falls in love.  I hit my 50k that year, and three months later I finished the novel.  November 2009 I wrote a sequel to that book.  Again, I finished the novel a few months later.

No, I haven't had any success getting those novels published.  After many kind rejections (really, they were mostly encouraging ... one wanted to read more of my work, but I didn't have anything else to send them!) I did some research on LDS fiction and found that publishers are looking for novels with "issues".  My two novels have no issues.  They're cheesy love stories.  That's the way I wrote them, and that's what they are, and I make no appology for it. 

In November 2010, I had a new baby.  I signed up for NaNo knowing there was no way I'd be able to compete.  I wrote about 3,500 words of a sci-fi novel that C gave me a plot for.  What's that, 7% of the 50k? Haha!

This year I was excited to do it again.  I've had an idea for a YA novel (shooting for 12-13 year olds) about a boy who works on a squid boat in Monterrey Bay, and this was the time to do it.  I gave it the working title of "Monterey Jack."  I started off with a bang, but around 12,000 words, I realized I was about half way through the novel.  Twelve thousand times two does not equal 50k.  So, I threw in a subplot about his best friend, whose parents had died and their fortune had never been found.  Between working nights on a squid boat and following a scavenger hunt to find the missing fortune, I eased my story across the 50k line with four days left in the month.  And I actually finished the novel in November, which is the less-emphasized point of NaNo. 

I've learned that writing a novel is a love/hate relationship.  Some days I love it, I think it's brilliant, and I'm so excited about it.  The next day I hate it, it's not worth the storage space on my hard drive, and I ought to just throw it away. 

I haven't decided yet if Monterey Jack is proof that YA is not my genre, or if I just need to give it time and work on it after I've let it sit a few weeks.  I'll let you know how that turns out.

In the meantime, I've hit 60k on my pet project - a novel I've been working on since 2008, on and off.  I'm at the climax of the book, and I can't wait to finish it off.  I'm funneling the momentum from NaNo into this novel, and I can't wait to share it with ... well, anyone who's willing to read it.  :-)