November 15th, 2008
I’m still working on my NaNoWriMo novel. The month is just about halfway over, and I’m just about halfway done, which is a good sign. I’m continuously surprising myself with how long I’ve been able to keep this up. If I were writing a novel outside of this self-imposed deadline, I would have become self-conscious of the perceived terribleness of my writing at around the third or fourth chapter or so, then given up. As it stands now, I do have some cringe-worthy moments, [1] but I also have some fun and thought-provoking moments to balance them out. My characters are really starting to come alive, and I get the feeling that I’m really going to miss them once the month is over.
I’ll get back to talking about games next month. Pinky swear.
Footnotes:
- Of course, I’ve realised that I can always edit these later, and the point right now is to get a first draft done. Because as they say, all the shiny new books in the bookstore started out as unpolished first drafts. ↩
November 3rd, 2008
This month, I have decided to join the ranks of over 100,000 people around the world and participate in National Novel Writing Month for the first time ever. I’ve never written anything of novel length before, being more of a short fiction kind of gal, but I’ve always wanted to try it, just to see if I can. The goal is to write over 50,000 words in 30 days. Time will only tell if I wind up succeeding. I’ve written slightly over 3000 words so far.
The novel, for those of you who are even remotely curious, is going to be a slice of life story about five people whose lives intersect through a community choir that they are all a part of. I seem to be really into slice of life stories these days, as many of you have no doubt noticed playing some of my games. Of course, doing a slice of life story as a novel is far less original than doing it as a game — one of the things that’s always stopped me from writing a novel is the notion that no one would be interested in reading it, because professional writers do this sort of thing way better than I can. Still, this is an exercise that’s more for my own development as a writer, with the idea that I’ll be able to transfer some of these storytelling skills to game writing projects. That said, if I wind up finishing the novel and people wind up reading and liking it, I certainly won’t complain.
