Preperations for NNWM are lurching along quite nicely. I realised yesterday that i haven't yet given names to a lot of my characters, ooops. In justification I find choosing a character's name quite tricky. I like to give them names that feel suitable to their personalities which don't really ripen until I've dropped them into situations and watched how they cope. That's not realistic I know, but I'm not dealing in realism. Anywayz, I'm starting character sketches now that I have the overall story in place. After that I'll do chapter outlines. In previous NNWMs I've only outlined a chapter about 5 minutes before I started writing it and that's led to rather uneven chunks. I'm hoping that outlining chapters will give the overall structure a tighter feel and stop me writing myself into corners too. Only a month to go so I'd better get on with it.

Prepping for NaNoWriMo ......AGAIN

After an indecently prolonged absence I'm doing NaNoWriMo for what is , I think, the fifth time. The 1st time I started just as Tony was diagnosed with his cancer, so the experience lasted 3 days. I did it again the next year. I found it helpful to lose myself writing for a solid month and I finished the 1st and so far only draft of my Roman army novel.It's been too painful to go re-visit that piece dealing as it does with an un-hinged female lead. I had another go a couple of years later but petered out somewhere along the way coz my head was out in space somewhere.I can't remember much about it, it was an Ozzie coming of age thing if but I can't remember any of the details. Completed NaNo one more time with a rather forgettable draft of 'Sea of Gods'. I don't know how many times I've tinkered with that mss, but it's main problem is an ending. It's all very well to have a story where the world you've constructed is destroyed at the finish but it doesn't read well . I think it was just more cathartic writing but longer. Anyway I'm preparing a piece that stalks familiar territory coz I'm back in the Bronze Age again. This one is a post-apocalyptic story set largely in 18th dynasty Egypt but with forays to Mycenae and Crete(of course). The outline is in a rough stage,I'm determined to have an real ending and that is the point of dong the outline in plenty of time. I will have a personal ending for my characters before I start . I will, really I will. Anyway the research is more focused and I'm itching to actually write something. I hope I still feel that way come the 1st of November. I just want to write again. I think I enjoy the total immersion of NaNo and maybe this time I'll produce somrething that's worth revising and attempting to publish. I think I can call myself a writer now having several hundred thousand words lurking on my hard drive even though a lot of it is disjointed fragments. I know I'll get that first 50,000 words done, but then I'll need real discipline to crack on. When I look at some of the drivel that's in print I can't understand why I'm so scared of putting myself out there. Time to man up and behave like a proper writer.