Faerie Eye

introvert with me

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

National Novel Writing Month || 2020


National novel writing month starts soon guys! It starts on November 1st, not too far already!

And guess what?

I've decided to actually participate in NaNoWriMo this year!

Though NOT the 50000-word goal, that is like 1700 words a day, and wow is that a lot. I think you can set your own word goal and I'm going to set mine at 10,000, so no chance of "winning" NaNoWriMo. Even if there isn't a way to have the goal set on the website, that will be my own personal goal. I think writing a little over 300 words a day is doable. I say before I've actually tried it... But 1700 a day I know is WAY out of what I'm capable of, I don't even have a concrete story that I want to write.

I don't know when I first heard of NaNoWriMo, or when I first started reading the forums when you didn't need to log in to read. I finally made an account in 2017 so it's taken a while for me to want to actually participate and not just lurk. Which I do, every year! I love reading people's processes and struggles with their own writing. Though weirdly, a bulk of it seems to be in the fantasy genre. Is that what's "in" for writing? I personally prefer to read realistic fiction type stuff.

Also, I have read two books in the past that were written by authors that participated in NaNoWriMo, even though that isn't why I picked them to read. I found that out AFTER I read them. So yay me supporting them even without knowing!


First was Water for Elephants, the second was The Night Circus. I really enjoyed Water for Elephants, , the beginning was AMAZING and I thoroughly enjoyed the time period (1930s depression) though the ending was a bit, okay I guess, but I understand, what would be a satisfying ending? While The Night Circus had such an interesting concept the first half of the book and the second half felt not as well thought out. For me anyways. I think it's really easy to come up with an idea, but trying to end it in any satisfying way is difficult. Cough Cough, looking at you Stephen King. I think Water for Elephants was also made into a movie but I didn't see it. Of the two, I would recommend reading Water for Elephants. Again that might be my preference of reality vs fantasy.

There is actually quite a long list of books that have been published from this challenge, either by traditional publishers or self-published. I think this challenge is so cool, and I love that there are so many potential authors out there that just need this push! I never bothered to look at the list before, but I took a gander this year and it was much longer than I was anticipating!


I'm not actually planning on writing an actual book, just thought I would try to put a recurrent daydream into words and see where that goes. I already know I can't complete it, because as they say "write what you know" and the one character in my story, and one of the main plots is something I don't know at all so that is definitely a writing block. 

Anyone out there has some ideas of a spy-for-hire type guy that gets caught up in some sort of new-job situation?

Let me try to be more clear: The guy normally does small tier stuff, either he is a wannabe bounty hunter, or private investigator, or gun for hire/hired enforcer type guy. I don't know where he gets his "missions" from, does he have an office? A handler? If handler, is it like the TV show Barry or is it like Deadpool where he just is kind of known around the local area for doing that type of stuff? But my guy hasn't actually killed anyone. He decides he wants to branch out, go bigger, or just get offered a job that is outside his normal scope and decides to take it. I don't know why. Maybe it's about money or business is slow, or he doesn't realize it's that different until later. 

The people that offer him a job are being watched by an opposing group, and this job is something they are trying to prevent. Enter my guy doing the job. As he figures out more about what he is doing, he finds out it's more dangerous than he thought and not really something he is comfortable doing. And now he is trying to get out of it but can't because of the people who gave him the job won't let him and he also has this other group after him but he doesn't know who they are. Does that make more sense? But I don't know what the job is, or if the opposing group should be like a government type agency? Or just two crime syndicates? And somehow group B knew about the job/project before group A hired my guy. Anyway. I want it to go kinda haywire where group A starts to think he has been working with group B this whole time, and group B thinks he is on group A's side, but really he is just trying to get out of the mess and isn't with anyone. It's not really a groundbreaking plot.

God, it sounds so silly when I type it out. Also, it sounds like, hey guys, can you just write this whole story for me? Good, thanks. Ha. I swear I have SOME semblance of a story. Just no middle. Or end.

If I could figure out his job, that would help me with more words because I could write about at least one job he just finished, or reference some stuff he has done.

I read a very disappointing romantic novel where the one character was a spy, and the writer totally just skipped over the whole action/climax part of the story! The women and he were holed up in a cabin, yadda yadda, tension builds waiting for the bad guys to show up and then they do, he goes out to deal with it... and then the next sentence it's like so that happened and now back to the cabin with her wearing a see-through sundress. Like what??? It was so disappointing, ha. Though to be fair, all of the romantic books I've read have been very disappointing, I really don't know why I read them. I'm beginning to think I just like being annoyed.

I feel like I'm in the same boat, like why am I trying to write an action plot? I normally skim over too much fighting scenes in books because they bore me if they go on "too" long.

But yeah, so I'm going to write out some of my thoughts and see if I can reach 10,000 with it. That will be about 334 words a day and this post is already over 900 words and I wrote this a short amount of time. It's not QUALITY but that isn't really my goal here (for my blog or the writing challenge) :D

Also, I don't plan on sharing my story, like at all. I'm still embarrassed about the stories and poems I wrote in High School and that was over 20 years ago so I can't imagine I would feel any differently about this.

Anyone else planning on participating? Or have you participated in the past? Let me know!