If you’re reading this blog entry in the months following NaNoWriMo (November) 2012, and you can see the little NaNoWriMo counters to the right, you may be wondering just what happened.
This is my stats graph from 2012. That first plateau you see from around the 13th was my mid-November slump. I was due to go north to visit my parents on the 16th, and with a change of scenery was going to hammer out the missing 10K. No problem.
Then at approximately 4.30am on the 16th, something awful happened, and for the next ten days I didn’t get a single word written. I did go north, but to visit mum, and bid a final farewell to my father. Wednesday 21st November was the funeral. It was incredibly difficult, because of the sudden and unexpected nature of his death, despite the Parkinson’s he’d suffered from for the past twenty-odd years.
What didn’t help is that I had just been writing a section of the story where the main character is grieving for the loss of her parents. So the thought of going back to the story at that time… it was all just too raw. I probably could have written some very believable grief scenes, but that can wait until the pain has dulled. I don’t think I’ll forget how it felt, I’ll just be better able to deal with it later.
On Friday 23rd November I flew down to visit Jhakka in Christchurch. It had been arranged a while ago, our little November get-together to write and spur each other on for NaNoWriMo. I went anyway, even though I didn’t feel like writing. I spent most of Saturday dropping in and out of sleep, fighting off headaches, stomach cramps and nausea. What great company I was! Still, Jhakka managed to write and I am proud to say that she completed her novel on the Sunday! I even managed to pick up my laptop and tap out a few words, gaining momentum towards the end of Sunday.
When I got back home it flat-lined again, until I did a push on the last day to get a few more words written. I wanted to at least pass the 30K mark, and am actually happy with my 34K result.
So, while not technically a winner for this year’s NaNoWriMo, I am happy with what I achieved. The writing, at the moment, is still slow, but it’s there in the back of my mind. I have renewed my membership to SpecFicNZ and might even bite the bullet and submit to a competition or two in 2013. I will keep working on New Rising (v2), because my aim is to have that published sometime next year as well. Finally.
The future is looking brighter. My only regret is that I didn’t get my A into G and publish sooner, when dad was still around to see it.
I’m not.