Great Day In The Morning! Victory Is Mine!

Around thirty days ago, I started plotting out a story called Knightfall. It was a story set in the world of "The Saboteur" – an xBox game set in Paris during World War II. 

It was going to be my entry for NaNoWriMo 2012, and I was kind of confident that it would be a winner (I have won every previous year I have entered, usually pretty easily). 

I started writing on the 1st of November, and it all went pretty well. I made good steady progress on the word count, and I was mostly happy with where the story was going.

However by the evening of the 7th, I was so very bored with my story, that I decided to give it up. Partly because my word count was getting slower and slower, but mostly because I was so very bored with it that I just couldn’t face spending the next twenty three days writing about it.  (By this point, I had a total of 15,641 words). 

So I realised I had two choices – either abandon the contest completely, or start with a new story. 

I took the second choice. I started a new story from scratch, with only a vague Idea about the plot. It was a political drama set in the world of Harry Potter. I had tried writing it before, but only got as far as a "pilot episode". There’d also been a vague attempt at a web-series, but that didn’t go very well either. 

I was mostly hoping that having a deadline to write against would give me the impetus I needed to write it properly. 

I zeroed my word count, and started writing again – and it went a tad better than I thought. Three days later, I had exceeded my word count for Knightfall (it helped that Day 10 was a Saturday, but still – it meant I’d done about 16,000 words in three days, which is nothing to sneeze at). 

By this point, I was slightly more positive about reaching the 50,000 word target, but slightly less confident about finishing the story within the 30 day deadline. 

Eight days later – ten days after I had restarted my story – I hit 50,000 words (52,899 words to be exact) and had a little party.

And tonight – nineteen days after I abandoned my first story and started another – I completed my second story and submitted it for validation. 

It returned a word count of 87,002 words, and a victory banner.

And so, as a wise man once said – Victory is mine! Victory is mine! Great day in the morning, Victory is mine!!

My girlfriend thinks that next year, I need more of a challenge —

Yeah. You need a challenge next year.

 

Cos apparently starting a story you’ve plotted out, scrapping it, and starting a whole new story writing in total more than double the NANO target is apparently not enough for you.
 
It is entirely possible she has a point. 

My total word count, including Knightfall, comes to 102,643 words, in 27 days. And my word count for the new story comes to 87,002 in 19 days. 

Now, of course, comes the proof-reading, formatting and posting for publication. 

I am hoping to get that finished by the weekend, so I can post the entire story on Sunday. 

And so NaNoWriMo 2012 comes to an end for me, with another victory for my tally. 

All in all, it was kind of fun.