(vol 6) CHAPTER 05: “NaNoWriMo 2019 – Day 6”

A lot of years that I do this, my first NaNo post falls within just a few days of starting, so there isn’t always much to talk about. Well today I’ve got almost a week of NaNo’ing beneath me and it’s going well.

Let’s see what I’ve been up to since the beginning of the month.

Day 1 – 2169 words

Well I do like to make things difficult, but this is the first time I’ve done something so extreme for a NaNo project.

Months ago I started a writing project that I liked enough that I decided to step away and save it for November. When October rolled around, I got to planning and prepping as much as I could. I was all ready to go and looking forward to where this year’s adventure would take me.

Then something happened.

I woke up on November 1st, thinking forward to my lunch break when I’d finally get fingers to keyboard and start writing. I had breakfast. I got dressed. I said goodbye to family, and I walked out the door. I walked to the end of my road.

And then a completely new idea for a novel popped into my head.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I struggle to let ideas go. When it happens, I didn’t consider it as a replacement, but something else I would look at in the future. So, I rolled it around in my head, discovered characters, explored settings, and found a pretty decent plot. By the time I got to work about 25 minutes later, I knew this was what I wanted to work on, and I flipped. And this story that appeared from nowhere on the first morning of NaNoWriMo 2019 is what I am still working on six days later.

With the working title BUNKER, I found my main character on the edge of a clearing, rifle in hand, waiting. I kept writing and gave him a father and a reason to be stood around. Then other people showed up. Then bad things showed up. And it all worked together to enrich this new world with its odd rules. 

Day 2 – 1859 words

Keeping with the free-flowing nature of the project, I sat down to write on the Saturday morning, wind and rain lashing at the house, and randomly decided to have BUNKER told from two points of view. So, after bringing a small group of people back to Bunker 24, one of these characters became my second point of view for alternating chapters. I don’t know if I’ll keep it going, or if it will survive the rewrites, or if it’s a good idea, but right now, almost a week in, its working very nicely. It builds the world easier having the perspective from one character from inside the Bunker, and one from the outside world. They’ve led very different lives up to this point.

Day 3 – 1689 words

Sunday was a busy day for me, and I only had the morning to produce anything. The chapter was a little bit of a slog to get through as it was mostly just scene setting, but the world I’ve created is paper thin in parts right now. So, there’s very little description in my description.

One good thing that did come out of if was the evolution of the main characters father. A lot of my NaNo first drafts have very 2D characters. They all sound the same and are limited in what they bring. They are mostly place holders. And that’s especially true of BUNKER which was born so suddenly that I’m still finding my footing. But when the fathers look and voice suddenly developed into a fully-fledged character halfway through a paragraph, it felt good. His dialogue and attitude immediately changed. I could hear him speak with every word I wrote for him. 

Day 4 – 1710 words

Another tough day to write as it was an inset day for my son’s school meaning writing wasn’t going to happen until the other half returned and I could sneak off for a bit.

This was also another day of struggling to get the setting down on page. It feels a little more like characters are rehearsing on an empty stage for now, as the sets are finished yet. I’m hoping to draw up an actual plan for the Bunker at some point over the weekend. This way I’ll know where everything is in relation to everything else.

On the plus side, the scene was a pivotal moment in the story as the first signs of actual conflict are revealed. I’m starting to picture the second and third acts now, so I’m beginning to put pieces in play that will carry our characters in the necessary direction of a finale. Of course, the beauty of NaNo is that it might all change again by the time I get there.

So the secondary character got revealed a little more but is still a bit of a mystery (more to the reader now, less to me). And I got to write the main characters father once more so that was a pleasure.

Day 5 – 1783 words

I managed to blag a late lunch (3:00-4:00) in the hopes that the canteen would be nice and quiet. It usually is. But when I grabbed my laptop and headed in, it was anything but. Add to that people thinking I was working instead of lunching, yet still talking to me about IT issues when I was doing my best to look busy, and I didn’t hit the 1000 words I can normally get done in my lunch break. 

Still, I carried on, getting down what I could. This scene was all about loss and is close to the end of the first part before a six month skip to part 2.

I got home, stuck on Jack Ryan, and headed towards my daily target (and a little bit extra). I’m already coming up with things that will cause a big rewrite of all that has come before as character and motivation seeps to the surface, but I’m looking forward to it. 

Stephen King always says that you find a story like a fossil I the ground. It’s already there, and you have to go gentle and see how much of it you’re able to reveal. I’ve never felt like that before until now. I finally get it. And I really like what I’m finding.

It’s all coming along nicely. For an idea that isn’t even a week old yet, it feels like I planned this one during October instead of the other project (which isn’t dead, just been moved down the list).

On a side note, I’ve been going through the NaNo forums a fair bit in the last few days, more than I normally would. The reason for this is I’ve found I’m not the only one who is having issues with the new look NaNo website. I’ve been looking forward to how the redesign was going to turn out, but so far, it’s been bad experiences for me and a lot of others. And one of the negatives from the overhaul is the loss of people friends list. As it stands today, I currently only have one Writer Buddy on my list (hello Liz 😊).

If anyone wants to add me, my username over at NaNo is just Brian S Creek. I’ve always struggled less when writing alongside buddies.

And let me know in the comments how your NaNo 2019 is going. Are you planning or pansting. And how are you finding the new look website for 2019?

Now, back to writing. My day 6 word count currently stands at 25.

See you in seven.

(vol 6) CHAPTER 04: “Plans for NaNoWriMo 2019”

No matter how bad things get in life, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, since 2007 November always brings me back to NaNoWriMo. It’s almost like a reset now. It doesn’t matter if I haven’t written for ages, if I’m stuck on something, or if I’m dropping thousands of words on another project; as soon as November 1st appears on a calendar it’s 30 days to write 50,000 brand new words.

LUCKY NUMBER 13

My ex has spent a lot of this last year getting into running as something she likes to do. She does a group run on a Wednesday, goes out on random evenings when she feels like it, and does charity runs too.

I couldn’t be prouder of her and what I’ve watched her accomplish. As the ‘proper’ running clothes began to appear, along with a smart watch, there then followed the certificates and medals. And then the distances she was able to push herself to, and the pride that showed on her own face at each step.

When she started doing well at it, I’ll admit I felt a little inferior. Sure, she might feel that she’s let herself down occasionally when an illness or injury stops her from hitting a target, but she’s just been non-stop with those stats.

But wait! No one likes stats more than me.

I watched her always pushing herself to go further, to go faster, and it began to dawn on me that I use stats to write my best stuff. Hell, using stats just gets me to write stuff, period. I can sit around for eleven months of the year, moaning that I don’t know what to write, moaning that I don’t like what I write, moaning that it all needs to be rewritten.

So how come when that November rears it’s head and calls out to me, I can stop everything and write 50,000 words in a single month?

Seriously; what’s up with that?

And yes, to you observant ones out there that notice all my past NaNoWriMo novels only exist on a couple of thumb drives, and no-one other than me has ever read them, well spotted.

But I write them. They still exist. 9 novels in at least first draft form. 

So while this year will be the 13th time that I’ve sat down and started writing a novel in November . . . 

. . . will it be the 10th time that I get to that sweet finish line? 

WHAT HAS COME BEFORE

Every year I like to reminisce over the first drafts of NaNo past before talking about NaNo present. And this post will be no different. Though for my return I’ve made an effort to spruce up the article; no cut and past for 2019. This is a mostly rewritten article.

So, lets look back over the almost-failed, the did-failed, the winners, and the record breakers.

Brian Creek . . . this is you (NaNoWriMo) life!

BEFORE NANOWRIMO

I’ve always enjoyed writing.

When I was a kid, I used to write my dreams down. As I gained a few years, I started writing all kinds of things, taking what I’d watched on TV and read in books and mashing all my favourite bits together. Sure, most of it was blatant copyright infringement, but it was my way of finding my feet, of expressing myself on paper.

When I got to collage, it was all about the movies and so I switched to screenplays. I was into the whole indie scene around then, so the killer dolls and spaceships of my teenage years faded away, and instead I took inspiration from GOOD WILL HUNTING, BUFFALO ’66, and all those kind of films; real people going through real pain.

And then, as winter turns to summer, my screenplays turned back to novels.

It was while working on an idea about a normal guy who hated his job and was friends with a grim reaper that I discovered an article online about this writing movement born out of San Francisco. It revolved around silencing your inner editor and just writing shit down.

It sounded like exactly what I needed.

2007 - DEATH IS JUST A DAY JOB
50,162 words

Upon visiting  www.nanowrimo.org and finding out what they were about, I didn’t waste more time and signed up to their website.

I didn’t have the concept back then of what 50,000 words was gonna feel like to write. I judged books that I read visually; a book was thin, thick, or a Stephen King doorstop. I either thought that is wasn’t that many words so this shouldn’t be too difficult, or the more positive version where 50,000 words was a doorstop and I was gonna write an epic novel.

When I write in November, there are two types of projects; ones that I make up specifically for NaNoWriMo, and ones that I’ve struggled at some point during the other eleven months of the year and am getting nowhere with.

As I mentioned, this first one was a story I’d been moulding in some form or other for a few months but was getting nowhere after the first ten pages. In some versions the guy was meeting the Reaper for the first time. In others they were long time buddies. But I had no plot, no antagonist, no other characters. Just a scene and a pair of outsiders.

Despite choosing the idea as my project, other than those basics, I planned nothing else for the November 1st start date. I went full Pantster. All I had was ‘a guy’ is friends with ‘a Grim Reaper’ and that it be set in my hometown. It had disaster written all over it.

Despite this pissing into the wind attitude I’d adopted, it started well. I’d sit at my work desk and write ideas down between menial tasks, then take it all home, boot up the PC in the back room, and hide myself away as it all clustered together on the screen into something resembling a story, only leaving the keyboard for basic things like food and toilet breaks.

I picked up a new habit after a few days when I hit a roadblock in the story. I was starting to see further out in the plot, have an idea where I was headed, but there were still holes or missteps. So what I did was just step over them. It was a first draft and these things could get fixed later. I learnt very, very early on that momentum is the key. 

And sure, this led to some hilarious moments and real head scratchers in the first read through in the December, the most memorable being a character who was killed off and three chapters or so later was just in a scene minding her own business, very much not dead.

I did hit the most infamous of roadblocks around the halfway mark when I made the stupid decision to by a new games console. Present day Brian would have set the Xbox up as a reward, something I now do each year too. But back then I was new to NaNo and didn’t foresee how my new toy would derail me.

And derail me it did. It very nearly destroyed all progress.

But as well as finding some negatives about my writing that first attempt, I also found some real positives. Like how, when I really knuckle down, I can write a lot if the game close to being lost. With three days to go I, I realised what was a stack, stopped the video games, and knuckled down for two nights of intense into-the-early-hours writing sessions, and went from expecting to fail my first NaNo, to crossing the finish line on November 29th.

Every ‘win’ feels amazing. I always slump back exhausted, grin like the Joker, and maybe give a quick little fist pump if no one is looking. But that first one, that was real special and I’ll never quite get as close to the same feeling again, no matter how many times I do this.

Of all the things I have written or will write, DEATH IS JUST A DAY JOB will always be the piece I’m most proud of. While it still lingers in first draft limbo, I’m determined to dust it off one day and release it into the wild.

2008 - THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER
5 words

After November 2007, I thought I had finally found my mojo and the novels that had sat unfinished in my brain for the last decade would now just flow onto bookshelves. I mean, thanks NaNoWriMo, but I’m not waiting eleven months to go again. I got this.

Except I didn’t. Editing DEATH IS JUST A DAY JOB came to a halt, and any new projects I started just fell into the same issues as before; loss of interest or a complete block.

I began to think that my first NaNo win would be my only, that it had been a fluke. I definitely went in with more fear than the last time. I knew what it would take. I knew that I was my own worst enemy.

So, as November 2008 loomed in the distance, I knuckled down and tried to come up with a way to get a second win.

My solution was to right short stories that combined to make a bigger one. Bite size should mean less technical hitches over a linger piece. So I looked back through my binders at everything I’d worked on and abandoned and I found one little story that I thought would fit my requirements; THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER. 

Like the previous years’ work, it was an idea that had a worked and reworked opening 20 pages but no more. The first chapters had changed over and over again so much, as had the style and genre. But as November 2008 stepped up, I settled on a YA fantasy that was designed to be built of five different adventures across one single quest. It sees the titular character stuck in the world of his favourite novels and travelling backwards trough the series. I thought I could write it bite sized and get through it a little easier.

Wrong.

I didn’t make it past day one.

I’m not sure exactly why, but I’d guess that life was doing things and when that first day rolled around, I was distracted, and my heart wasn’t in it.

Thankfully that wasn’t the end of me and NaNo.

2009 - JUSTICE
50,160 words

I was even more anxious going into 2009. One win, and one no show. What was gonna happen this time?

I continued the theme of taking stories that I had started over and over again, and with Marvel kicking off the golden age of Superhero cinema, I took my love of the films and comics and decided it was time for me to write something I was really passionate about.

I had pictures and stories and characters from my collage attempts at my own comic book, and it was from here that I mined everything I might need.

Originally titled WHAT A HERO WANTS, I wanted to tell an origin story with a twist. Unlike heroes that stumble into powers, or are forced into situations where they finally become the hero, my main character wanted nothing more than to be a superhero and was close to realising his dream when a dramatic moment forces him to turn his back. From hero to zero. 

The love of the subject matter showed in how easy I found the story to write. I never had to work around anything, I never got lost or stumped, and I found the ending when I needed to. I like all the characters and where they ended up. I saw room to improve and enlarge the story. And as I wrote, my mind showed other stories in the same universe. A nice big playground to explore. I never found myself stumped and went straight from beginning to end in a nice, cohesive manner. Probably the smoothest NaNoWriMo project to date.

2010 - I AM BROKEN
57,149 words

One of the things people find difficult about NaNoWriMo is finding the time to write. When something comes up any other time of the year it isn’t too bad to miss a day. But under the time constraint, missing a day forces you to find somewhen else to write 1667 (or more words to make up for the loss.

That year I once again went into NaNo with an old beginning that I’d rewritten and rejigged several times over the years (seriously, I have a cellar full of these), but this time I had something else, something that meant I had no excuse to fail. 

None. At. All.

In September of 2010 I was made redundant and put on Garden Leave. No work, but still getting paid. So when NaNoWriMo coasted up 32 days later, I had all the time in the world.

I didn’t have the normal thirty days with work taking up a massive chunk of change. I had from when I woke to when I went to bed to write as much as I could. I was a gift and I was determined not to waste it.

In fact, I was so optimistic, I upped my required work count from the standard 50,000 to 60,000. 

I AM BROKEN was hard to write. Not physically. I wrote every day, set personal bests, and managed to be across 50,000 by November 30th. But it was a big story, bigger than anything I’d ever written before. And I don’t mean work count, though the 57,000 I made it too was impressive in my eyes. No, it was big because it was filled to the brim with characters and ideas and plot. I was layer and complicated. And things just kept adding. 

If everything I’d written before was ‘Carrie’ sized in its length, this thing was my ‘Stand’.

One thing that I found really helped, and it’s something I’ve used to assist me every year ever since, is writing to movie soundtracks. It really helped me write to a certain style and build the story cinematic in my mind. In 2010 I picked one specific soundtrack and played it on a loop as I wrote. 

Thirty days later I was done. At I didn’t make it to the 60,000, this was the most I’d managed to date, and I only had one lull around the two thirds mark. I crossed 50,000 on the 24th and just kept going. The only thing that makes me sad is that I never got to the end, even to this day, and that part of the story is still sat in my head. 

One day I will get it onto paper. One day.



2011 - THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER
15,150 words

As my fifth year of NaNo rolled around, I was beginning to feel quite confident in my taking part. Only one misstep out of four tries, and with a record-breaking previous win, I stepped up like I owned NaNo.

Of course, I had a job at this point, so that would be no all-hours-of-the-day writing. 

I changed my game and decided to fill the hole in the current collection by going back and fixing my one failure. Months before November I started planning THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER in more detail, ironing out all the kinks and making sure I knew exactly where I was going.

Once again, this story beat me. Again, I found myself distracted, and the story drifted away. My daily word counts were poor and the finish line moved further and further away. I tried to relight the spark gave me the idea all those years ago, but after two weeks, and only managing 15,000 words, I knew I was dragging a dead novel beside me and I decided to let go.


One day I will finish Maxwell’s story.



2012 - DEAD DOLLARS
2173 words

If 2011 was bad, this one was much worse. I don’t like excuses, but for this one time I think you’ll agree that failing wasn’t much of a choice. With another idea from the cellar, I dived into DEAD DOLLARS, a zombie western inspired by the scene from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.

I say dived in but, due to the circumstances surrounding November 2012, I’m surprised I even thought about trying to write anything at all.

The wife and I had chosen to move in with her father while she was pregnant, and were looking for a bigger place to live. The space we had in my father-in-law’s bungalow was limited as was TalkTalk’s excuse for Broadband. This is in itself would have been a challenge for most NaNoWriMo participants but for me it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Add that to another redundancy in less than 2 years, and suddenly writing a zombie western didn’t seem like a priority in life. As November approached, I kept flicking between wanting to take part and thinking it would be crazy to add more stress, but in the end I knew NaNo was good for me and figured I needed something positive to keep me going.

So I began. It was as tough as I thought with limited internet access and nowhere to sit down and write comfortably. I’ll never know if I would have gotten to the end of the story as our son, who was due at Christmas of that year, decided he wanted out sooner. Right in the middle of November. 


Needless to say, DEAD DOLLARS didn’t get much further.

(to be continued . . . )

(vol 5) CHAPTER 06: "NaNoWriMo 2018 - Day 21"

This NaNo is starting to take it's toll.

While the story itself is chugging a long, that is also the problem. It's chugging a long. For the last two years I couldn't wait to get to writing each day. And I wrote, A lot for me. I never got stuck or felt like I was worrying about my 1667 daily target.

But this year it's almost become a chore.

Don't get me wrong. I like the story. And I think there's promise there. But I didn't plan as well as I could have, and so I'm almost treading water now, throwing ideas for scenes together, knowing that when I edit, a lot will be chopped out and/or rewritten.

I even have the regular issue where I've either forgotten a characters name from an earlier part of the story, or I haven;t even given them a name (Harrison's wife it sill called 'Harrison's wife' and I'm nearly 40,000 words in!).

But I'm not worried about hitting the target. The 12th was still the only day I didn't hit my target, and I'm not near the end of the story, so every thing should be fine.

(vol 5) CHAPTER 06: "NaNoWriMo 2018 - Day 14"

So, we're nearly half way through the month, people. Millions of words are escaping writers minds and becoming trapped forever on paper and screens across the globe.

I'm still beavering away at a steady pace, keeping myself afloat as apposed to steaming ahead like last year. I'm still finding the book a challenge due to its nature, but I'm not giving up on it.

DAY 8 -
I had a lot of fun with this chapter today. The main character is a geek, and us geeks love a good comic book store. In keeping with the shared/mixed universe, our character visits Four Sided Triangle, one of the main locations in last years SUPERGOD. He discusses his favorite comic books with a member of staff, which gave me the chance parody classic comic book story lines. So in place of MARVEL's 'Secret Wars' or DC's 'Infinite Crisis', we have 'The Chaos Fallout Saga' where the comic book hero meets he arch nemesis, the universe is at stake, blah, blah, blah. 

DAY 9 - 
I struggled to get the words down at first on Day 9, as the scene was going to be tough top write and I kept holding back early on. But once the gloves came off, and the conflict between the two main characters ignited (leading to the first real inciting incident) it just flowed. I'm always much happier with dialogue and their argument just hit the keyboard so naturally. 

DAY 10 - 
This was another slow day of writing, primarily because it was the slow down scene after the big argument previously. IN this scene the main characters is sharing what has just happened, which unfortunately leads to a lot of repetition for the reader if not done correctly. I have not done it correctly. But that's what edits are for.

DAY 11 - 
As well as the video game and the board games shared by the characters, the two main characters also work on a comic together during the novel. So not only is their relationship at stake and very much on/off for the duration, but the unfinished first copy of their joint project risks becoming a casualty. Something that came from this scene that was unexpected and may be developed later, was having the character of the comic, a Barbarian named Banter, manifest himself in Harrison's mind and talk with him when he's alone. Will see how that goes later.

DAY 12 - 
This was a bad day. Two kids birthday parties and a very late showing of the F1 highlights the day before meant I was exhausted, and then the Monday was taking up with getting my sons new bedroom ready (a lot of furniture and books were moved in the making of this bedroom) meant I managed less than 300 words today. It's the first time I haven't crossed the daily 1667 this month and I went to bed grumpy.

DAY 13 - 
I picked up where I left off and completed a scene that present the challenge of being mostly a text conversation. And it was a scene where the status quo almost returns, but is lost at the last moment because the main character stays true to himself. Then what follows is more conflict in the characters past life. He is slowly being pushed out of his past, while a future doesn't seem to exist, and this is what the character is struggling with as he finds himself very alone and cast adrift.

DAY 14 - 
Following a couple of crap and meandering days, I hit a scene which made me reevaluate an idea I have for the book which may be extreme enough that a title change will be needed.
The characters play a video game in the story and this was on top of the gimmick of the board games nights, and the comic book project. It was getting cluttered. So I decided to cut the board games out (hence saying bye ye to the title) and fleshing pout the video game. And I plan on doing this by setting the scenes of games playing inside the world of the game. So chapters will occur in a fantasy world setting, but there will be little tell-tell signs of it being a game experience (XP, areas off limits, etc). And i'll use these scenes to exaggerate real world moments for slightly comedic effect. Hopefully.


Sp there we are. Hours away from the half way mark and I'm still on track, despite one road bump.

How is everyone else getting on? I see a couple of the @FlashDogs are steadily heading my way. 

I'm off to force my way kicking and screaming over the 25,000 word mark. Keep up the great NaNo work all you awesome writers.

See you in seven.

(vol 5) CHAPTER 06: "NaNoWriMo 2018 - Day 7"

So, it's that time of the year where words must be put to page, and an idea must be brought kicking and screaming into the world.

This year my project is a novel called SHUFFLE DEAL PLAY, and it's a little less genre, and a lot more personal. After a really tough 2018, I'm partly writing to get things off my chest, and I'm putting my main character through some of the shit I've had to deal with recently. I hope he handles it better than I did.

DAY ONE - 1672

Harrison Parker, our awesome yet stressed main character suffers his first humiliation that leads him down a dark path. I've taken to incorporating things from other stories into my works and this opener is no exception. The character is an artist and he loves comic books. But instead of going with the usual MARVEL or DC stuff, I'm once again using superheroes I've created for another project. I did the same thing for last years SUPERGOD. It's fun making things up for my own universe based on my love of all things comic book.

DAY TWO - 2094

The second chapter introduces us to Harrison's working environment. This takes a lot from what I do for a living. A lot of his work life will include anecdotes from my time working in IT. We also meet the first of Harrison's friends, one of the small group who unknowingly keep our hero on the right path when he can't see it.

DAY THREE - 1737

Now things get really tough for Harrison. This was a difficult scene to write, but I managed to put myself in his head and really wonder whether he would and could go this far away from himself. I had to remember that Harrison was going through an ordeal in his mind, and this is where he shows the first signs of cracking.

DAY FOUR - 2031

We've seen Harrison's work life, and now we see that things aren't too much better at home. This introduces his wife and son and explains why he doesn't feel like he has many happy places left. It's going to be a challenge to keep Harrison from just being a pathetic character with everything going wrong. But he also has to have that feeling of being totally suppressed in life.

DAY FIVE - 2062

This was my favourite day of writing, partly because I came up with a cool gimmick part way through. The character spends some time playing an online fantasy game (again using something from another project instead of something real world like The Elder Scrolls). I didn't like writing the two characters in two locations while their game characters were in a third fantastical location. So I considered writing these scenes in the future as if they are both in the fantasy setting of the game. Obviously this puts me into a more comfortable position with these scenes, but I think it works well and mixes things up a little while still progressing plot.

DAY SIX - 1838

This was a tougher day of writing. The character meets up with a couple of other friends and takes part in a game of Cluedo, all the while revealing to those closest to him a big secret he himself has just discovered. It ended up as a four way conversation at points and there was a lot of 'he said' 'she said'. Felt messy, and will definitely need saving in the edit.

DAY SEVEN - 1718
And easy scene to write today as it is almost an exact recollection of what happened to me several months ago. A lot of the rewrite of this project will be about bending it away from fact and focusing more on what makes a good story. But true life events are being used at this early stage to plan out the rough route I want.

So my running total so far is 13152. The story isn't rolling out as rapidly as the last couple of years, but I think part of that is because I'm quite far outside my comfort zone. No real opportunities to pull and alien invasion or zombie attack at any moment to spice things up.

But it's still more than zero, and I'm not stuck (yet).

How are your own stories coming alone? Hit any road blocks, or is the story flowing faster than you fingers can type?

Let me know in the comments below or on twitter (@BrianSCreek).

And keep writing. 

See you in seven.

(vol 5) CHAPTER 05: "NaNoWriMo - A Personal Story"

Well, hasn't this year been a crappy one. 

This blog isn't normally for that kind of talk, but the lack of posting and writing, especially off that back of the release of BRISK WORLDS last year (a wave I'd hoped I would continue to ride) shows that being an author has dropped way down my list of priorities.

But, like a dependable friend who is there for you even if it's in the face of abuse, NaNoWriMo has come around again. Even the crap I'm going through right now won't stop me from getting 50,000 words on paper during the month of November.

And to keep things interesting, in a departure from my previous work which is normally guaranteed to contain superheros, aliens, zombies, and/or talking gorillas, I'm going for a more real life feel. And I'm using the shit year of 2018 to help.

NANO MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND!

So, if you followed me before I dropped off the face of the Earth, you'll know that I've been big on NaNoWriMo for a while.

I started way back in 2007, and have only 'failed' three times since then. Much to my own disgust, I still haven't put a single project out there from what I've completed each November. I say every year that "this novel is the one", but it never happens. 

So I won't say it this time.

But my project for 2018 is definitely someone different to what I normally try.So, as I step up once more, I'm equal parts excited and scared. I'm aiming for a more Douglas Coupland feel (the early stuff like Microserfs). None of the usual genre stuff that I fall back on. It's real life.

It's my life.

Sort of.

It's been a bad year, as I said before, and this blog isn't a 'Dear Journal' kinda place where I jot down my feelings, draw little hearts with the initials of my current crush, and ask a piece of paper where things went wrong for me. This is a writing blog. At least it is when I'm actually doing some writing.

But lets just say that my personal life has been through the wringer in the last 18 months and I feel like parts of it could be twisted into a pretty decent story. And, as a friend said when I mentioned my plan to step out of my comfort zone, I don't have to publish, and it might be therapeutic.

Who knows what will become of it. Only time will tell.

And speaking of time . . . lets take another annual look back at my NaNo history.



2007 - DEATH IS JUST A DAY JOB

Back in the summer of 2007 someone pointed me in the direction of www.nanowrimo.org. I was told that it was something that might hold the key to dealing with my inner editor.

It seemed simple enough; 50,000 words in thirty days. Of course at the time I didn't have any concept of how much writing that was. I’d never written that much before and had no idea what the word counts were of books I read. But I was feeling brave, so to hell with it.

I passed through October of that year, I signed up to the site (under the now deleted Briman79 profile), and started looking at my ideas folder. I settled on something I’d been toying with for a few months that involved a down on his luck guy who becomes friends with the Grim Reaper. All I had was a pub scene I'd written while bored in the office one weekend. No other characters, no setting, and no plot.

And then November 1st hit.

It started well. I’d spend the work time just daydreaming ideas before getting home, booting up the PC, and writing whatever my brain felt like ejecting.

I hit some road blocks along the way but, instead of stopping, I thought about where I was heading next and just started from there, knowing I could go back later. Of course, this led to some strange happenings, especially when a character was killed off and then returned five chapters later with no explanation. I guess that’s what editing’s for.

I ploughed on until I hit a much bigger road block in the form of an Xbox 360. It was a stupid time to get one and my word count took a massive hit because of it. As I neared the end of the month it looked like I wouldn’t cross that finish line on my first attempt.

And that made me mad. So the video games stopped and I knuckled down. Three very late nights later and I crossed the finish line on November 29th.

Of all the things I have written or will write, DEATH IS JUST A DAY JOB will always be the piece I’m most proud of. While it still lingers in first draft limbo I always have an eye on it and am determined to dust it off one day and release it into the wild.



2008 - THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER

With something now complete, I moved straight onto my next project and began planning a superhero novel. I’d just finished reading Austin Grossman’s ‘SOON, I WILL BE INVINCIBLE’ and had an urge to novelise a comic book I’d written in college.

Unfortunately when November came around I wasn’t feeling it and instead started a project I felt was more manageable; THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER. This was a YA fantasy that was designed to be built of five different adventures across one single quest. I thought I could write it bite sized and get through it a little easier.

Wrong.

I didn’t make it past day one.



2009 - JUSTICE

I was determined to not miss another year and so I went back to my super hero novel called JUSTICE. This went smoother than my previous two attempts with only three days of non-writing across the month. Unlike 2007, I never found myself stumped and went straight from beginning to end in a nice, cohesive manner. Probably the smoothest NaNoWriMo project to date.



2010 - I AM BROKEN

By the time this NaNo rolled around I had received some bad news that inadvertently lead to a very nice silver lining. In September of 2010 I was made redundant and put on Garden Leave. With November approaching I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and was determined not to waste it.

With thirty whole days and nothing else much to do, I got on with I AM BROKEN, another of the many, many stories I'd started years before. This was the first NaNo that I began with anything close to a full cast and not much more was added. The plot however exploded thanks in part to the music I was listening to. 

I’d been using movie soundtracks as the background to a lot of my writing including all the previous NaNo’s. But 2010 was the first time I picked one specific soundtrack and played it on a loop as I wrote. I think this helped keep things coherent theme wise.

Thirty days later I was done. At 57,149 this was the most I’d managed to date and I only had one lull around the two thirds mark. I crossed 50,000 on the 24th and just kept going. Despite the free time I had though, I AM BROKEN still doesn’t have an ending.



2011 - THE ADVENTURES OF MAXWELL COOPER

After 2010 I went into the following NaNo with a lot more confidence. Other than a new job I’d started a few months earlier, I had no other commitments.

I decided to take another stab at my failed 2008 attempt. I planned a lot more this time with character sketches and chapter plans, something I hadn’t really done in previous years. There was a hell of a lot of ‘Pansting’ in the first few efforts but I decided to give ‘Planning’ a try.

Once again this story beat me, although I managed to get further. Still, I knew it wasn’t working and, two weeks and 15,000 words later I gave up.

One day I will finish Maxwell’s story.



2012 - DEAD DOLLARS

If the last year was bad, this one was much worse. I don’t like excuses, but for this one time I think you’ll agree that failing wasn’t much of a choice.

With another idea from the vault, I dived into DEAD DOLLARS, a zombie western inspired by the scene from ‘A Fistful Of Dollars’ where Eastwood is shot several times but just won’t die.

I say dived in but, due to the circumstances surrounding November 2012, I’m surprised I even thought about trying to write anything at all.

The wife and I had chosen to move in with her father while she was pregnant, and we looked for a bigger place to live. The space we had in my father-in-laws bungalow was limited as was TalkTalk’s excuse for Broadband. This is in itself would have been a challenge for most NaNoWriMo participants but for me it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Add that to another redundancy, and suddenly writing a zombie western didn’t seem like a priority in life. During the last week of October I decided to skip it and focus on other things but, fickle as I am, I changed my mind back by Hallowe’en. Why not, I thought. It will give me something to focus on during all the crap.

So I began. It was as tough as I thought with limited internet access and nowhere to sit down and write comfortably. But none of that mattered by the middle of the month. Our son was due at Christmas of that year, but he decided that that was too far off and wanted out sooner. Right in the middle of November.

Needless to say, DEAD DOLLARS didn’t get much further.



2013 - MIGHTY GREY: SEASON ONE

A year into a new job, still stuck in a bungalow with no room to move, and now I had a one year old son.

I should have failed.

Instead, my episodic ode to Buffy became my most successful NaNo project to date, breaking all kinds of personal NaNo records on the way.

Somehow, by taking my crappy Samsung NC-10 Netbook to work, and writing a little before shift and a lot during lunch, meant I hit the daily target of 1667 before I even got home in the evenings. Sometimes I was managing  up to 3000-4000 words a day which for me is impressive.

I powered on with each ‘episode’, hitting around 17,000 words and finishing on a climax before moving onto the next and the next. These mini endings made it easier to move on instead of aiming for that one finale that was miles off in the distance.

Even now I don’t know how I managed to accomplish what I did that year. Not with so much against me when I struggled on much easier years. The main thing is it became another project under the belt and another NaNoWriMo certificate on the wall.



2014 - FRACTURED DAWN

During the summer of 2014, while working on my CampNaNoWriMo project TATTOO, I looked at projects I might want to pick up when that year’s November rolled around. Was it worth taking another stab at my 2011 or 2012 failures? What about the planned sequels to several of my projects?

No and no.

I decided, instead, to try a different approach. Inspired by fellow Flash Fiction writer Betsy Streeter’s excellent ‘NEPTUNE ROAD’, I planned to write a long story that would be released throughout the following year as weekly episodic. Inspired by Game of Thrones, mixed in with the backstabbing and politics of the offices I worked in, I molded the company who employed me into a Fantasy novel continent, and transformed my work colleagues into witches, warriors, monsters, and bandits. The idea was to build up 50,000+ words as a head start, and then release each chapter (roughly 2000-3000 words) once a week, while continuing to write more and more.

So how did this backfire, I hear you ask?

Well, quite simply, things changed too much between December 1st 2014 and February 6th 2015. And not just the name (turns out that Fallen Swords was an online Fantasy RPG). I altered a massive chunk of the pre-story, some characters were expanded upon, the start point was altered. It turned out that by the second episode, I already didn’t like the MNA having amnesia, and the rewrites were so extensive, I was pretty much writing from scratch instead of having a healthy back log to present as I carried on writing.

By the time Episode 11 came around on June 26th 2015, I was switching my attention to starting my CampNaNo project, and the Fractured Dawn project was pissing me off.

And that was all I wrote.



2015 - CHRIS & MIKE vs THE WORLD

Last year was a continuation of a huge output of Flash Fiction. It was from one of these story ideas, the 100 word, weekly adventures of CHRIS AND MIKE vs THE WORLD, that all of my larger 2015 writing projects were ironically spawned from.

July’s CampNaNo was the expansion of the first Chris and Mike Flash Fiction story. I aimed for novella length with the first book, ‘CHRIS AND MIKE vs THE RISING DEAD’, at around 25,000. So I figured November’s word count allowed me to write two more novellas back-to-back.

While editing the first book through August and September, I had one eye on where things could expand for the future adventures. Everything went smoothly. I finishing book 2 halfway through November, before getting the majority of book 3 complete in the remaining two weeks.

Again; big plans, but nothing to show for it. I spent the end of last year planning the remaining novellas and short stories. But you’ll notice a common theme with me; ideas don’t pop into my head to be born. It’s where they go to die.



2016 - UTOPIA FOR PEARS

Having over 200 Flash Fiction stories written means I have fertile ground for book ideas. Couple one of my Flash Fiction stories from 2015, with enthusiastically published Author Liz Hedgecock’s placeholder name for her 2015 NaNoWriMo project, Utopia for Ducks, and the result was UTOPIA FOR PEARS.

An ode to classic sci-fi like BRAVE NEW WORLD, 1984, and FAHRENHEIT 451, this entry into my NaNo catalogue was one of the smoothest projects I've ever written. 

I never missed a day. The final word count smashed anything I'd managed before. I beat my previous finish line date by one day, and the story wrapped up nicely on the 30th.

I've revisited the novel several times since then, and it's probably the closest I've gotten to publishing one of my works outside of BRISK WORLDS.



2017 - SUPERGOD

I started a story close to SUPERGOD many years ago and felt like it had legs. So I planned the hell out of it in the build up to NaNo and then let it loose to see what would come out of my head.

I didn't expect much, and certain didn't think I could match, let alone beat, the previous years numbers.

So I was more surprised than anyone when SUPERGOD became a juggernaut that I couldn't stop. Without stopping time or defying the rules of the universe, I manage to find minutes to write all over the place. I finished early, beat all of my personal records and came out of it on December 1st with a truly epic story.

And for the first time ever, I haven't gone back to see what I can edit out of a NaNo project. SUPERGOD is a story that really does reflect who I am and contains almost everything I would love in a great book. But it's got a lot going on and the editing on this would be harder than anything I've ever done. 

I'm not the writer I need to be, yet. 



2018 - SHUFFLE DEAL PLAY

Which brings us to this year, where I take my personal life, twist it up, wring it's neck, and chuck out a story about a man wondering where his life has gone and why everything suddenly seems so difficult. And meanwhile his friends wonder why he won't let them help him.

Lost love, broken hearts, the struggle of fatherhood, and board games galore, all surround the tale of one guy just wanting to be loved.

I think I could be really proud of this one.



WHAT ABOUT YOU GUYS?

And that's it. My NaNo backcatalogue grows as another year passes.

What are you all up to. I know a fair few people who participate ni this awesome annual event. 

Is this you first and your nervous? Is this your second and you scared that last year was a fluke? Or are you like me, where this is an annual treat you look forward to more than Christsmas?

Let me know in the comments below, and add me as a buddy over on the NaNoWriMo website.

30 days to go people. Lets go write some stories.

See you in seven

(This is an rewritten version of the October 29th 2014 post, “Never Forget Your First NaNo”)