NaNoWriMo 2024 - The Starlings of Sorlimk
I had planned to write something of a follow-up for The Cloudskimmer last year, but then someone made a joke, and used that time following through on it, so I was initially very certain that I wanted to write a follow up this year. But then I started writing a Pen and Paper system on it, and suddenly I found myself with a lot of worldbuilding to do, so instead of the large plot I wanted to write, I decided to write that. In form of a novel, yes, but I'm considering this something comparable with extended universe books in concept.
First, I had to decide whether I was actually going to do it this year or not though. The issue is, that without looking, I managed to fill up and double-book my calendar for most of the month, which meant I probably wouldn't have the time to write that I felt I had needed the last two times. When the first week was almost done, I hadn't written more than the about 3000 words I had prepared in October. I had to seriously think about skipping and doing it more like The Naked Stranger, but for 2025. I decided that I'd give it a try, but since I didn't want to waste time writing and come up short by 10k or so, I set a cut-off for that weekend. If I could make it to 20k that weekend, I'd continue the project. I had the pitch for the project worked out - it's a quite simple one, to be honest - so once again, it was more about execution.
I made it to about 25k that weekend, which marked completing the project as very plausible. Obviously I finished in some capacity, but in the proof of procrastination, I finished at about 3AM on the 27th, so not as early as I might have, if I had kept up the tempo. What was different to the last two projects was that not only did it have a plot, unlike the Cloudskimmer, arguably, but I hadn't really planned it out in any detail by the time I started writing. I knew settings-wise what I where I wanted to start, and where I wanted things to end, but I didn't have that for the characters. That would turn out to later surprise me, when I wrote the words "I'll get out of your hair in a moment".
I also didn't write daily. The process went differently from the last time in that I wrote this novel almost chapter by chapter. I'm also fairly certain that this one just had fewer chapters. I usually spent most of the session (which was usually a day with several sessions, wherever I found the time) writing the majority and finishing a chapter which was usually around 2.6k words, then writing a few hundred words of the next chapter so that I knew what I had to think about the next day I committed to a chapter. Did it result in a lot of late nights? Yes, definitely, but it also felt like a much more normal writing process, rather than trying the long marches that I went for with The Cloudskimmer. Then again, this was very much a kind of plot with the same kind of themes that I'm used to writing, so perhaps that's why things came easier this time. I mostly moved the work around for The Naked Stranger, so this is perhaps the best process that I could go for with NaNoWriMos. Not enough to want to do this again in June, but next November? I'm expecting to be in for that again, but if I do, I might want to give another genre a try. Especially since this time around, I did a lot of different writing and creative work in parallel to writing the novel, which leads me to believe, that it just took a lot less work than either of the two previous attempts.
In a way, I'm pretty happy that I ended up powering through, even after the lost first week. It feels more honest than starting now, and finishing a year later, and the process just was more enjoyable than last time. Or it might be just practice. Who knows.
As always, a PDF version, and an EPUB version.