Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

It was a lot harder this year. I’m told that this is quite normal for a second year. There was something inside me holding back–perhaps because I do so much other writing now. November has been a bit crowded with the three blogs and getting back into Markeroni and a magazine article and, actually, taking on a guest post spot on a different blog (you’ll see). But still…I did it.

I think that discipline and strategy would have helped. At first I did my 1667 words a day, and it was part of my routine. Then there was one day when I just didn’t get round to it. And another and another and suddenly the part of my brain that says, “Gee, I can’t be bothered,” was in full force. I hate that part. I hate that it holds such sway over me. It’s the killjoy part that always puts down what I’m up to and makes it no fun, because I let it.

So I thought about it, and did the only logical thing other than quitting (which I considered): I cheated.

Cheating in NaNoWriMo means bolstering one’s word count up by any means necessary, and is par for the course. I find it’s good, sometimes, to break away from the normal rules of society by which we stifle ourselves and to branch out into naughtiness.

Since this is naughtiness in a novel it’s hardly likely to cause trouble outside of my characters’ world, so it’s safe. And refreshing. And, oddly enough, gave my plot some juice. Once I had cheated my way through that horrible seven thousand word wall, it was as though I had given myself permission to carry on and not worry about the twenty Beatles songs I had just had my character sing, not to mention Ten Green Bottles.

One of the members of my “local” group (I remained affiliated with the South Bay group this year) threw out a challenge: finish the novel with these words: And then Dylan exploded, and I’ll give out a prize of some home made cookies. I thought about how I could make that work and then suddenly the end of the novel came to me, which gave me a bunch of ideas to keep going. I also managed to kill off a main character, twice. Eminently possible in a vampire novel.

It ended up more poignant than I had thought, for a book that had been flippant from the beginning. I was not expecting my tough-ass vampire character to become a vulnerable pregnant human. In fact, pregnancy was not in my plot view at all until about day twenty two when it suddenly seemed appropriate. Nor did I expect to kill off her rival for her beloved’s attentions. (Yes, I’m killing my plot here, but by the time this novel is in any shape to share believe me, you’ll all have completely forgotten about it.)

So when I wrote those last words, “The End,” there was relief at getting my life back but also real sadness at what I had just caused to happen in my characters’ lives.

So in the end, even though I am quite sure this is a horrible novel and will need almost complete rewriting before I let it see the light of day, my characters did come to life for me, and that’s nice, because it means that somewhere in there I still do have an imagination and can create things from scratch.

Just a few random posts

• Three books about blogging: Part one–Blog Wild! by Andy Wibbels (4)
• 13 June 2003 (0)
• I admit to having a strange sense of humor (4)
• Phone Post (transcribed) (0)
• Dale Aycock, author of the “Starspinner” series, from Los Gatos, California (0)

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