Phew NanoWriMo done – 50199
I have had a bit of a marathon. I know NaNoWriMo is supposed to be a month but I got a bit carried away and did a fortnight.
As already mentioned – I have a second draft of a romance awaiting the next rewrite – I wanted to get on with another book, but didn’t want to write in the same genre, in case I started getting my characters in a twist – so I went for a supernatural thriller.
I started it a few weeks before Nano and had got ten thousand words down. I decided to use NaNo to push it up to sixty. I’ve really enjoyed it but I was writing in first person present tense and after a while got sick of my own voice, droning on about rubbish. I also found it a bit limiting and found myself nearing the end of the story, when I was aiming for 90K. I thought that it would probably be better to change to third person past tense (my usual form) so that I could add in a different point of view. I had sent off my first few chapters to the brilliant Jenny Kane as part of her novel in a year course and I was pleased when she came back and suggested that I might want to try third person.
I started to rewrite it in third person and as I did, the genre changed from supernatural thriller to ‘romance’ – I just couldn’t help myself! ❤ . I guess romance is in my heart. I have always wanted to write series books in the ‘cosy mystery’ genre, which often have a romantic element. I feel thrilled that I now have characters that I am developing and a first draft which exceeds 60K. Although, of course, this is a very shitty first draft – especially with the POV changing part way through – I feel I have something I can work with. As a series book I may be looking at a shorter word count…something to research over the coming weeks.
Although I haven’t achieved what I set out to i.e. ‘to be a cool thriller writer’. I am excited about my new characters and the adventures they will be going on…
Now
I really must clean my house ha ha
Suzanne Fox 