Writing Blog Number 2

20241101 NaNo-01

NaNoWriMo #1

So, I said I'd be posting my progress on my blog. I was too tired last night, so am doing it this morning before writing a job application and then hitting the story again.

It is the morning of day 2. Yesterday I churned out a solid 10571 words. On what? Well...

3, 4 months ago I started a cryptid horror based on an Australian creature of legend. I set it in the same area I live in, a two couples, best mates and their wives, going on a camping trip. One of them was a lazy guy who was always late, even for his own wedding (that trait is based off a former friend of mine, who, yes, was late to his own wedding!), and he held them up so they arrived after the office closed. The four of them could not get into the caravan park (that's a very Australian thing, I've been told), so they went to one of the overnight sites that dot the peninsula. That night they were to be attacked.

After 6k words or so, it had petered out. I had the creatures, and the lazy guy was key to the ending, but the story was not going anywhere.

As a pantser, this is an unfortunately common occurrence.

But I still wanted to write about the creature.

So, I hit upon changing the setting from where I live to the south-east of the state. The lazy guy still means they are late, but they are now part of a group, and the group does not like the late guy, so the two couples are shunted to one side. Oh, the mates have now married twin sisters. By going to the south-east, I made them part of an amateur palaeontology group, and I also had more people to be victims of the cryptids.

I also changed from 3rd person omniscient PoV to 1st person, the lazy guy's mate, married to one of the twins.

It was clearly all the story needed - I wrote the first 10 chapters (I think they're chapters; some are quite short) and cracked 10k words in a day. 500 at midnight (a sprint), 4000 in the morning, 6000 in the afternoon/ evening. Collapse into bed at 8:30pm, my brain feeling like mush.

That was what happened on day 1!