I'm a Winner!

And So, it Begins . . .

So, there it was, October. I was busily making my "section sheets" for my National Novel Writing Month project, drawing lines in my Pen and Gear wide-ruled, one subject notebook. I was even more busily scribbling in information about whether the section was an action or a reaction section, who the main actor in the section was, the bare bones of what the section was going to be about. On the back of each page, I wrote sample scenes, a bit of dialogue or exposition that might act as a jumping off point for each section, even if the scenes themselves never made it into the upcoming novel. I made it through 24 of 40 sections with this process, when, suddenly, it was November. No worries, I told myself. I'll fill in some additional sheets during the month. I was lying to myself, of course, given that outlines, like battle plans, never survive first contact with the "enemy." (My apologies to German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke and all the other people credited with the origin of the quote!) Any attempt to continue with the sheets at which I stopped would be futile.

The Game is Afoot!

I fired my opening salvo at 12:01 November 1, 2024. It was a pretty weak burst of fire, to be honest, with me petering out at a mere 445 words. In the past, I've always liked to spend that first hour throwing in as much extra verbiage as possible, to give myself a nice jump ahead to set the tone for the rest of the contest. I guess that the long day entailing deer meat and Halloween horror movies had too much of an effect on my stamina. Nevertheless, I managed to make a full 1695 words on that first day, ending up with 28 more words than my daily goal! Yay me!

The wheels began to come off the whole thing on November 4, the first day that my characters decided to pursue a Shiny not in The Plan. I patted them on their heads and told them that they had to do better the next day. Not one of them had been given a double name (like Billy Joe or Cindy Lou) and I was indeed using contractions, so they had to throw me a bone and cooperate with me. Their response was to give me only 1420 words the following day. I sat them all down and reminded them that I am The Writer and am indeed in control. They smirked and elbowed each other and Kevin (the mouthy one) informed me that I should enjoy my word count for the following day. After hitting a whopping 190 words on the 6th, I tossed out the section sheets and gave them all their freedom to do as they would. My spirit of compromise seemed to have an effect, because the following day they gave me 1623 words.

The Hard Slog

Anyone who writes long fiction knows that it's not a sprint to the finish (neither is a good short story, but I digress). Sometimes, it's not even a marathon. Rather, it's like Stephen King's The Long Walk, which more than a few people on Goodreads likened to The Hunger Games. NaNoWriMo has elements of TLW, given that you have a certain speed limit to which you must adhere (although no one is waiting to unalive you if you fall beneath that limit more than three times) and by the end you're just thinking "I don't care what you do, Johann, just MOVE already!" I swear I should have made Kevin the main character and Johann the main sidekick. Johann is the intellectual and wants to think everything out, while Kevin buzzes around asking "where do I go next? Can I punch him, shoot him, blow the place up?" However, the book is part of a series and Johann is the one who makes the journey throughout. *Sigh* It's not too late to make it a shared series or even a single book departure from the regular protagonist. After all, Agatha Christie did it in The Murder of Roger Akroyd and Arthur Conan Doyle did it to some extent in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Then again, I'm no Dame Agatha or Sir Arthur, so I think that I need to stick with Kevin lighting the proverbial fire under Johann every now and again. *Sigh*

Somewhere along the way, relationships in the book changed. Some were strengthened, some were added, some were weakened or subtracted. New characters were introduced who took on importance well beyond their original conception. Johann became less the stodgy intellectual, developed a bit of a headstrong nature, and returned to his father's roots. One character I felt compelled to hate at first, showed a human side. That made him no less a villain, but it made me want to soften his ending. We'll see if that stands in the next draft. One thing about giving characters their own way is that once they've romped and played to move the story along, you can always go back, use a flanking maneuver, and get to serious business of kicking tuchis and naming names on the next pass.

The good news is that I never dropped below 500 words for any given day again. With a moderate amount of sleep aided by a copious amount of caffeine, along with a return to the section sheets when I needed one of those sample scenes to give me a boost, I managed to make it to 46,915 words on November 29. As you can see, even my Stats page was telling me that I had no business finishing on the 30th, not with over 3000 words to go and my 1616 words per day average. That for you, Stats Page!

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!

November 30, 2024 dawned bright and cold, with 3085 words to go. I had two barrels of deer meat and bones to process at Dan's, but my "bad" shoulder (old injury, new/potential arthritis) was telling me that I needed to stay home and rest it. Ultimately, I convinced Dan to let me throw everything in the freezer and take the day "off," provided that I worked on Sunday instead of Saturday. Despite quail escaping their cage and a couple of other minor homestead mishaps, I managed to knock off almost 1500 words before I headed up to Dan's to do chores. By 7:00 p.m., I was back in my seat in front of the computer, ready for the final push to victory!

Right. Yeah. Sure.

Come on, Johann, the ball is in your court, I begged. He politely reminded me in his lightly accented English that he was a prisoner and had no say over his actions. I prodded him along, which is when he developed his attitude. He engaged in malicious compliance with the doctor, conned his escorts, and mouthed off at the guard at his room. After a few humorous elements added to move one character out of a particular space and because I was getting a tad punch drunk, I finally got him to the "end" of the story. I'd reached 50,121 words!

The truth is, I still have about 12,000 more words to go to reach the actual conclusion of the novel, but at that point I had a "complete" story. I uploaded my final word count at 11:45 p.m. I basked in the glory of my low-resolution congratulatory graphics, emailed my story to my alternate address, chilled a few minutes with a celebratory bag of microwave popcorn and a "Friesian Horses" video, and then headed off to bed. The big job comes starting January, when I finish Part One of the novel and then integrate and conclude Part Two. Until then, I can revel in the glory of being a National Novel Writing Month Winner! Yay me!

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