This October has mostly been prepping for Nanowrimo, tidying up some old projects and writing my #fantasyqueensfall entry for the competition being run over IG. It’s been a busy month, and November looks like it’ll be even busier!
What I’m writing for Nanowrimo
Last year I did my first ever Nanowrimo, and it left me with 50,081 words on my WIP nominally titled “Assassins Book 1”. It was the first of a trilogy of stories, and originally intended to be a short writing exercise to get my novel writing skills into shape before attempting my massive fantasy novel (nominally titled “Magnum Opus”, I know, I come up with interesting names!).
This year, I did toy about writing my other project (a urban fantasy short story). I had “write a plot for Nanowrimo” on my to do list for about three months, but I never seemed to get around to it. My Assassins book kept sucking me in, and I was getting more and more stressed about how little time I had to finish it this year if I took out the whole of November to write a new project.
So I’ve decided to continue my Assassins story for Nanowrimo. It’s already sitting at a meaty 120k words, but there is a lot of story to flesh out (and then trim down) so there is more than enough room for some more sub-plots and getting the characters nailed down.
Now I’ve decided to carry on my WIP (and, maybe, even finish it!) I’m starting to look forward a lot more to Nanowrimo. Still terrified, slightly nervous, but mostly excited. It’ll be a good challenge, and one I’m looking forward to.
The Curse of the Silver
So I got involved in the #fantasyqueensfall competition held over on Instagram this month! The prompt was for a spooky story that had something cursed in it with a twist ending.
My submission was called The Curse of the Silver. It was a super fun little story, and it was a real challenge to keep it within the 2000 word limit for the competition. But after spending so long writing my Assassins WIP, it was really satisfying to write a story in under a month and get it finished.
Now, if that could happen with my WIP, that would be fantastic.
What else can you expect in November?
As I’m doing Nanowrimo, I’m putting my #storiesonatheme on hold for a month to give me some space to breathe. Having one theme per month is working really well, but for Nano I need every spare second of time I can afford to write.
I’m also going to be posting my Newsletter story 3% up on my blog this month! For those of you who subscribe to my newsletter, you’d have already been given access to the story back at the end of September when my Newsletter was released.
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Other Fun things
His Dark Materials officially starts this weekend and what can I say other than 10 year old me is super pumped.
I had a lot of feelings about Wheel of Time (I mean, who doesn’t?) being made into a TV show.
I’ve also been trying to cultivate some more writing theme posting on my IG by sharing some motivational Monday posts:
And that’s it for this month folks! Join me on social media to join in with the Nanowrimo fun, or come and add me as a buddy on the Nanowrimo site!
Happy writing!
Alex.J.Cobalt 