NaNoWriMo 2020 recap

After taking a year off from the challenge, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year. Instead of trying to write 50,000 words in November, I set a more realistic goal of 15,000, which meant an average of 500 words per day. I'm happy to say that I reached my goal... and then some! I finished the month with 20,037 words.

November started off strong for me. After the first ten days, I was on pace for over 20,000 words, but then a mid-month slump set me back. While 15,000 still looked achievable two-thirds of the way through, I didn't know if I could get to 20,000 anymore. Fortunately, with the Thanksgiving holidays and an extra two days off from work, I made a final push during the last Thursday through Sunday to get across the 20,000-word line.

All in all, I'm pleased with how NaNoWriMo went this year. Not only did I surpass my goal of 15,000 words, but more importantly, I've made great progress on my WIP. Thanks to NaNoWriMo, there's a good chance that I can finish the first draft by the end of the year! That is more important to me than any monthly word count goal.

NaNoWriMo 2020

It's November, which means National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us again! After skipping NaNoWriMo last year due to a hectic work schedule, I'm back at it this year. It's not that I have more free time now, but I'm approaching NaNoWriMo differently than I did in the past. In the first three years that I participated, I was able to reach the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month. The next two years (2017 and 2018), I didn't. 2018 was particularly disappointing because I only wrote 18,907 words. I have no expectations that I will come close to 50,000 words this year. I may not even reach 2018's word count. In fact, the target I'm setting for myself is a modest 500 words a day, which will total 15,000 for the entire month of November. It's a goal that will force me to stretch myself, given my time constraints, but one that is achievable if I dedicate myself to it.

I'll report back at the end of the month on how I did. Wish me luck!

The Stand

While rearranging my bookshelves one day in an attempt to create more space for books (a topic for another blog post), I came upon a copy of Stephen King's The Stand. I don't remember when I bought it or why. However, when I saw it this time, I had an urge to read it. I've heard many Stephen King fans say that it's his best work, and if I'm not going to read it now, will I ever? 

The copy I own is the Complete and Uncut Edition in paperback format, weighing in at over 1,400 pages. As if I didn't have enough reading challenges for 2020 already, I'm adding another one: finishing The Stand by the end of the year. 

Despite everything negative that has happened this year, 2020 has been a good year for reading. I'm on track to read more books than last year, and there's a slim chance that I'll match the 100 books I read in 2015! So how could adding a 1,400+ book to my reading goals hurt? Check back at the end of the year to see how I do!

First person present tense

There used to be a time when I would only read stories written in the third person past tense point of view. Most books are written that way, so it wasn't a challenge to indulge my preference. On the occasions when I read a book with a first person point of view, the narration threw me off because I wasn't used to seeing the story take place through the eyes of a single character. It was even stranger to read a story written in present tense because past tense was how I thought stories were "supposed" to be told.

The Hunger Games opened my eyes to the allure of first person present tense. The combination of a gripping story, great writing, and the selected point of view made for, to me, as close to a perfect novel as I've read. It still remains my favorite YA novel of all time. I don't know how effective The Hunger Games would've been if it wasn't written in first person present tense. Suzanne Collins's choice drew me closer to Katniss Everdeen than I had been to any other character I can think of, and telling the story in present tense made the action come alive in a way that I don't believe past tense could have.

Since The Hunger Games, I've read a lot more books that use the first person present tense. I don't know if it's become a more popular choice among authors or if I'm gravitating toward books written that way. I'm embracing writing in first person present tense as well. The short stories in my Driver series were my first published works using that point of view, and they were fun to write. While I've written more stories since then in other points of view (primarily third person past tense and first person past tense), I'm working on a new project that's best suited for first person present tense. After abandoning my last manuscript (written in third person past tense), this one has been more fun to write, and I attribute some of that to the point of view.

Do you have a preferred point of view in the stories that you read or write? Are there any that you dislike?

 

I miss being around physical books

 

It's been over five months since I've last visited a library or been inside a bookstore. That's more than five months where I haven't been surrounded by physical books, and I miss them. I might go as far as to say that I miss being around physical books the way some people miss being around their friends during this pandemic. That's not strange, right?

Thanks to the Libby app, I've still been able to borrow e-books from the library, but e-books aren't the same as physical books. Also, I can't roam around the Libby app like I can walk between the bookshelves at a library or bookstore and see all the books that I haven't read before. I have my share of physical books at home, but I'm still a long way from owning enough to capture the feeling of a library/bookstore. (But one day...)

Even when libraries and bookstores re-open, the near-term experience will be different from what I'm used to. I'll have to keep a safe distance away from other patrons, and I'll hesitate to pick up books at random because I won't know who has touched them before I did. However, I look forward to the day when I'll be able to be surrounded by physical books again.

Admitting defeat

For the past two years, I've been working on a novel. It was going to be my first thriller, a different genre than the YA I normally write. I chose it because thrillers are my second favorite genre to read, and I had an idea that I thought would make for a great story. After chipping away at it for so long, I'm finally setting it aside. Giving up on something is hard for me. I'm the type of person who insists on finishing what he started, even if he doesn't want to. I don't stop projects before they're done. I don't DNF books (except on rare occasions), even if I don't like them.

What finally made me stop working on this WIP was how messy the manuscript was getting. I started out with an outline, which made complete sense to me before I began drafting. As I started writing, however, I spotted holes in the plot. I'd fix one plot hole, and another would pop up. It got to the point where I feared the story was going to be an incoherent mess that no one would enjoy reading it. Now that the story is behind me, I can see that I'm not yet skilled enough to pull off the thriller I had in mind. I hope that I'll be a good enough writer in the future to revisit the manuscript again, but for the time being, I'm admitting defeat.

The good news is that I just started working on a new story. I'm going back to writing YA again, and two weeks in, it's going well. Then again, the first two weeks of writing the thriller were also fun and problem-free. :-)

A new reading goal

In April, Goodreads published a list of the 40 most popular mysteries of the past five years. I was surprised to find that I had read almost half the books listed. Many of the others were books that I want to read but haven't had a chance to yet. Given how my NY Times Bestseller reading challenge is going, I decided to add a new reading goal this year: read as many of the 40 most popular mysteries as I can. I won't add any restrictions regarding the authors of the books, and I won't necessarily read them in order but rather based on their availability. Given that this is my second-favorite genre to read (after YA speculative fiction), I'm optimistic that I'll find more books I enjoy on this list than the NY Times Bestseller list.