750words.com

Wow, I just found this site from a link on the NaNoWriMo forums page. I have been looking for something to do since I finished NaNoWriMo last month I was amazingly able to finish with just over 50,000 words. I had an idea for a story about eight months ago. But I hadn't done anything with it. So when Jonathan mentioned it the last weekend of October I thought I would give it a shot. It was a crazy month. I started out excited and ready. But soon discovered that I didn't have any idea of where the story was actually going to be going from that point. I found that this book was written in a way different than anything else I have written. Most things I think about for long periods of time. I write when I have scenes and things worked out and ready in my mind. I usually have the whole book 'written' in my head. Then I just have to type it out and add the needed details to finish it up. But this story, well, let's just say it didn't work out that way. I went for days without writing anything. I was stuck. Not what I would think of as 'writer's block.' But maybe that is exactly what it was. I didn't know what to do or where to go. I had no idea of what was really happening in the story. So here I was getting farther and farther behind. After over a week of not writing a single word, (from November 5 - November 14 not a single word was written) I was over at my friend's house. We were just talking. Not talking about writing or NaNoWriMo. I had not told her that I was doing that. But our talking turned to writing. I found out that she had been working on a story idea. I didn't know that she had been writing anything at all. So I was happily surprised. She read me some of her stuff and told me a bit about her story. She was not doing NaNoWriMo. But one of her daughter's friend's father had done it in the past and he had told her about it. This is when I told her that I was trying NaNoWriMo this year. I told her a bit about my story and about the fact that I was somewhat stuck. I gave her a few of my possible ideas. I think just talking to her had helped to work somethings around in my brain. That night after I went home I was renewed. I was ready. And I was confident that I could do this. I was over 15,000 words behind. But I knew that I could do it. I was insane. It was time to write. But even yet, I was not writing this in the way that I normally wrote. I had in the past been able to just sit down at the computer and type the things from my brain and into my computer. But that was not always working with this story. There were parts where I was able to sit at the computer and type. But there was a great portion of the story that I actually had to write by hand in my notebook. I still wonder if that is because by hand writing it, my brain would be able to work things out a bit more slowly. I still have not decided exactly why I had to do it that way. But as it turned out, much of my novel was handwritten in my little notebook and later typed into the story. And then there was another interesting factor in writing this NaNoWriMo novel. I really didn't know what was going to happen. Several times with my pen in my hand I would stop writing and look down at the words I had just written on the page and think, "Wow, really? Is that how I want this to work?" The first couple of times, I actually stopped to think about it. Because I didn't see how that was going to fit into my story. But after this had happened several times, and it seemed to be working for me, I just said to myself, "Okay than, lets go with it and see where it leads." In the end I finished the novel. Or at least got to a stopping point. Some of the things did not turn out the way I had expected them to. But I did it. I finished 50,000 words in 30 days. It was amazing. And now I have an unedited novel, that I know has several problems that I will have to work out. But on the whole, it is a story that I am quite satisfied with. Now I just need to find out if it makes any sense to anyone but me.