NaNoWriMo, Day 30: How the story turned out

It is finished! I have once again defeated the odds and crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line with more than 50K words – 66, 781, to be exact.

Of course, when I say that it’s finished, you know I don’t mean that, right? I have at least 4 more days of writing until I get to the end of the actual story. My new goal is to at least be done by my birthday (Dec. 7, if you’re planning to shower me with birthday goodness).

This year’s NaNoWriMo has been kind of a whirlwind. I actually considered skipping it this year because I had so much stuff going on. I was certain that everything was going to get in my way, and that I probably should just take a break. Besides, I had just finished writing a book in October (which I’ll tell you more about at a later date), and I was exhausted from that endeavor. But as November came closer and closer, I couldn’t stand the thought of missing out on all the fun. So days before Nov. 1, I decided on a story idea and I plotted the story.

And then, just because writing 50,000 words in one month isn’t crazy enough, I decided to LIVE WRITE my novel. That’s right, I posted my messy rough draft for everyone to see. It was the equivalent of walking around in my underwear.

And you know what? It was completely freeing.

Suddenly, writing became fun – really fun. Not that isn’t fun every other time. But this time, I wasn’t worried about if it would be good or not. I was just writing for the heck of it.

It turned out what I was writing wasn’t good. It was GREAT! I don’t mean that to brag at all. As the writer, my job is just to get out of the way of the story and let it tell itself. And so I did. This year’s NaNoWriMo novel was a Peter Pan fan fiction, told from the eyes of Tiger Lily. Peter Pan is only my favorite childhood story of all time. So to be able to spend a month with these characters has been kind of a dream come true.

But it’s even more than that. This novel is my love letter to JM Barrie’s epic story. The characters have become like real people to me, and I feel Neverland all around me throughout the day. It’s funny, I’ll be just doing the mundane, and then the wind will pick up or the moon will rise, and suddenly, I’m second star to the right and straight on till morning…

At any rate, I am so glad I didn’t decide to skip this year. I’m really happy with the way this novel turned out, and I’m glad I get to live in it for a few more days. I’m excited to see it come to fruition.

And yes, this novel will be published. 🙂 It’s going to be a few months, of course, as it needs to be edited and all the other fun stuff that goes along with putting a book out into the world. However, you can read it NOW if you can’t wait that long. I have published the rough draft over at Wattpad. At the moment, I have 12 chapters posted. I will be posting a new one every 1-2 days until the book is complete.

If you’d like to read along, go to http://w.tt/1RicP40. The story is called LOVING THE WIND. It will be posted until sometime in January. After that, I am taking it down until the book is published.

So that’s how I did for NaNoWriMo. Did you participate this year? How did it go?

P.S. I have some book news to share with you. First, Come Here, Cupcake is now available in the Amazon Prime Lending Library! If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow this book and read it for free. (The Road to Hope is also available in the Lending Library)

Second, both Come Here, Cupcake and The Road to Hope are being offered as giveaways on Goodreads. Go enter for a chance to win a paperback version of either one of these books (just click on the hyperlinked title in this paragraph)

That’s all! 🙂