The halfway mark has just passed for all those who are beavering away at the NaNoWriMo challenge and it amazes me each year how many new people take up the challenge.
The thing is, NaNoWriMo doesn’t just have to be a month long event – it reaches far beyond that. For those who live in the Nottingham area at least, the meets are all year round so you can have support in your writing and make some lifelong friends who share a knowledge of something that so many people really don’t understand. That is just how hard it is to write.
For those who have chosen writing as a career it also gives you a very helpful sounding board and creative influence that really is invaluable.
As Mightier Than the Sword UK’s bloggers have reported, my NaNo writing has taken a sudden productive turn. 16 days in and I have just passed the 45,000 word mark and don’t show any signs of slowing down. I was originally writing the ballad of Grendel’s Mother, an experiment in writing an old epic poem and using my degree in English and Dead Languages but found that inspiration wasn’t in it. I have the first fifty lines but it’s definitely something I will have to come back to after I have refreshed myself on Beowulf.
Instead it is the Chronicles of Celadmore that I have fallen back in love with, and yes I am perfectly willing to admit that I love the books I write and the characters I create. If I didn’t then I am not sure that I would still be writing them after all this time. So it is End of Days that I am working on and it seems to be going really well. I’ve written the beginning and the end so now it’s just filling in everything that comes in between. For once this book isn’t just a journey of discovery, I have all the plot points that need to be resolved by the end of this book all planned out and the new characters that are being introduced have all got back stories in place. It is possibly the most organised I have ever been when it comes to writing a book.
Mightier Than the Sword UK Publications 