Writing Blog Number 2

20241201 - NaNo-31

NaNoWriMo #31

Day 31

Okay! After killing myself mentally for 30 days, I cleared off 162,833 words of creative writing.

What did I write?
In order of size:
‘Christmas Lunch’ – 100 words (drabble)
         A discussion between two people about a Christmas feast.
‘Mental Peace’ – 167 words (poem)
         Written for Merit Badge Magic, a poem, about a struggle to find inner peace.
‘My Christmas’ – 234 words (poem)
         Parody of the Dorothea Mackellar classic ‘My Country’ about an Australian Christmas celebration.
‘News?’ – 273 words (poem)
         Poem about the validity of Facebook news reports… or lack thereof.
‘A Visit From My Muse’ – 407 words (poem)
         Parody of the CC Moore classic Christmas poem about a writer being harassed by their muse.
‘What Makes Christmas?’ – 974 words (short story)
         A girl sees that Christmas is about family, while her rich friend comes to the same con clusion.
‘Adrian’s Call’ – 2020 words (short story)
         A dead man calls women to join him in the sea, against their will. Or is it?
‘Aesima And Her Demon – 2845 words (short story)
         A young girl is exorcised of the demon afflicting her, then asks for the priest who did the rite for her demon back. Set in my fantasy world; the priest is the main character of the world.
Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell – 18576 words (story cycle)
         A series of stand-alone short stories that work as one over-arching narrative about a vampire hunter who goes after a pair of vampires, who were lovers in real life.
My Sidhe – 18576 words (novella)
         A young boy finds fairies living on the property where he stays. His aunt hooks up with a man who wants to take her for everything. With the fairies’ help, the nasty man is punished without being killed, and the boy gets older and is set up with a fairy wife.
From Above – 50234 words (novella/novel)
         A group of amateur palaeontologists are hunted by mysterious, tree-dwelling cryptids, and are killed off one by one until only a few are left, after they are isolated by a lightning strike. The creatures are not all killed… Sequel bait?
21 Years Later – 63416 words (novel)
         A woman, after 21 years, is confronted by the demon/entity that her family brought into the world, and before five people close to her are killed, she has to defeat the demon and send it back t where it came from.

So, I put myself down as a NaNoWriMo rebel this year, knowing I was going to be working on more than one story. The cryptid story I started months ago, but it failed, so I started again with the same monster. The fairy story has been festering in my head for a few months as well. The Bat Out Of Hell idea I had when Jeff’s activity was announced, but never started it because I thought it would go over the word count. The rest, the ideas came to me over the course of the month.

Beholden asked if I counted these reports. The answer is no. At an average of 350 words a day of these blog posts, that would add 10,500 more words. Plus the 3.5k words of writing I did for my actual freelance writing work (1 extra Weekend Notes column, two press releases, and a brochure). And the reviews I did for WdC? 33 this month at say 150 words a pop for around 5k more words there. This would mean 181833 words came out of my head in November.

No wonder my brain feels like mush.

And that’s NaNoWriMo for 2024… and probably for good.