Introducing Maktaaq and Nanowrimo

I have never posted here so let me introduce myself.

My name is Maktaaq, I maintain my own blog and I am an amateur writer trying to get in with the big fish.

I am on Litesthesia to represent those of us who aspire to be writers, in other words, one of those people who is guilty of wanting more to have written a book than to actually write it.

Mind you, I have been prolific in my writing and I have been published.

Like most aspiring writers, though, my writing output consisted of childhood novellas, pompous teen poetry, adult-era press releases and final reports, and numerous first pages of epic novels.

I've been published on JMWW, a travel newsletter, in a teacher's handbook, and twice in my alumni newsletter.

If my press releases count, my publishing credits go way up. If my 'zines, comics, pamphlets, newsletters, handouts and blog posts count too, then I have been very busy.

But they don't count.

Last year I put my foot down. I was going to shape up my writing, be truly prolific and get published.

I had been doing National Novel Writing Month every November since 2002.

National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated to Nanowrimo) is when thousands of people attempt to write a novel. A novel in this case is 50,000 words in thirty days. Many succeed. Many more never get past zero words.

To write a novel in thirty days one needs to maintain a pace of 1667 words a day. Some Nano novelists churn out 2000 a day to make up for those days when they might need to slack off. Others attempt marathon sittings of 5000 words a day. Some nitwits even got past 10,000 words on November 1, but I sure wouldn't like to read the crap they're typing out.

That first Nano I got to 2000 words of a story about a unicorn called George the Turd that escapes from the Musée de Cluny. I read it out a few months later to a writing class and someone said, "I once wrote a story about a prissy unicorn too." That killed George.

The second Nano I began my novel about an orphan who kept lists of words hidden from a headmistress who used the orphans as slave labour. My orphan was to have run off with a black sailor called Tom, but as far as I know she still languishes in the dreary orphanage mending socks for seamen. I quit at 3000 words and my writing class liked that one better.

The third Nano got me to just over 15,000 words with the story of a travelling carnival, its vampire-zombie freakshow, an invincible heroine in a materialist country run by a militaristic chancellor, dozens of muskrats both living and taxidermied and a ten-year-old six-foot bearded little girl called Heidi. Genre writing must surely be easier for a first time novelist than literary writing, I told myself.

This year I am continuing my story from last year to its 50,000 word culmination and will try to add that 50,000 to the 15,000 from last year for a grand total of 65,000 words.

To combat the writer's block that always plagues me, I took a course in character development this summer at a local college, I read the Nano forums to see what others suggest and I am writing paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions. I'll be writing more about those later.

Last night I picked up How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (edited by J.N. Williamson). What caught my eye was an article by Ramsey Campbell, "What's Been Done to Death."

Towards the end of the article, there was a fraction of a sentence that stood out to me: "If an idea or something larger refuses to be developed, try altering the viewpoint..." Ah ha!

I've been fixated on my main character's viewpoint, with brief dips into the private worlds of the other characters. Maybe it's time to expand those brief dips into plunges. Maybe it's time for the top taxidermied muskrat to come back from the dead.

If anybody else out there is doing Nano this year please comment on your experiences.

Thank you for reading.