Nanowrimo 2013 Recap

Hi there, friends and followers, it’s me again! I know I’ve been updating you every Wednesday, but still it seems like I haven’t had a chance to just share on this blog since I started the Nano Spotlights. So…

I had such a blast doing nano this year! My region is so awesome, I was running around doing four write-ins most week, having a great time with fellow writers, cheering each other on. We did an Intra-region challenge this year, central Hamilton versus East/South versus West/North. The West/North tribe won by a small margin; I was on the East/South team, which took an early lead and then fell behind badly, but I don’t care, I had fun anyway.

I’d planned to do a ‘Triangle of Rebellion’, finishing two Camp Nano books and starting sample chapters for a third novel manuscript. That took me to 50k, and then in the last week I wrote a short story and started another one, turning my triangle into a very irregular pentagon. Here’s the breakdown of my sixty thousand words and change, by project:

• Opening chapters for “Measuring Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale”: 26,078 words
• Ending for “The Aurigae Express”: 19,232 words
• Ending for “The Witches of Arion”: 5,492 words
• “Soldiers”, complete short story draft: 7,248 words
• Opening scenes of “Beauty”, (the short story with the horses): 1,975 words

Let’s see, what else can I tell you about? November started in a kinda strange way, as I’d known it would, thanks to the Reversed Polarity Doctor Who convention in Toronto. Friday morning, I reached 1464 words in two sprints, then left for work with all my luggage, and that’s all the writing I got done that day. Saturday, I did one quick sprint in the morning from my hotel room, another in the lobby while housekeeping was cleaning my room (and in the gap between two panels,) and one more sprint via twitter.

Sunday, I did two quick sprints before I checked out of the hotel room, and I had decided that none of the afternoon programming was as exciting as the possibility of making it back to Hamilton in time for my first write-in. I stayed for the ‘Allons-Y filmmaking’ panel even though it didn’t have a description, and I’m glad I did; the hour was mostly filled with a presentation by two guys making a documentary movie called ‘Chasing Atlantis’, talking about the lessons that Doctor Who had taught them that had helped fuel their passion for the film, and that could fuel passion for anybody who wanted to chase their dreams. I talked to them a bit about my own dream of writing after the panel, and bought myself a Chasing Atlantis t-shirt.

And yes, I made it back to Hamilton in plenty of time for that Sunday afternoon write-in, and it was a great one.

I picked up a tablet Bluetooth keyboard for the Nexus 7 on Friday evening, and wrote the last 2423 words of Nano on it, at the Friday power center write-in and Wafflepalooza! It’s a cool piece of hardware, and I’d be trying to post on it now, but my mother is borrowing the Nexus to see what it’s like reading books on a tablet.