NaNoWriMo

In November 2022 six WHAM! members used the NaNoWriMo Challenge, to try to write 50,000 words in a calendar month - 1,667 words per day, 30 chapters… For 4 weeks we met for an hour each Friday morning, to discuss progress and to read sections out, for feedback.

Below are some Introductory chapters, and Authors’ comments on the experience of writing under this amount of (self-induced!) pressure.

AUTHOR COMMENTS, Novel 1: The Contingent

 Writing a novel in a month

I very nearly finished the whole first draft of this novel in the allocated 30 days of November, 2022.

In the end it took me all of November, writing every day for 2-3 hours - and then 6 more days, although I justified that to myself by writing more than 30 chapters, and more than 50,000 words.  I wasn't quite disciplined enough to hold it to the numbers.  Because I had only roughed out the overall structure, I wasn't entirely sure how the story would play out, or how it would end.

 As usual, the characters got out of hand, and wanted to do and say things I hadn't expected them to. Worse: some characters just arrived, by themselves - and then got out of hand like all the rest...

 The process overall though was very interesting, and certainly instructive. I wasn't sure it was even possible - but it is! The daily word limit is do-able, and about right, letting you off the daily hook at about the time you start to get tired.

 I had an advantage. I was writing semi-fiction, using events that actually happened, and with the aid of a small diary of the real Coronation Contingent of 1937, which kept things in order for me - although I did let myself be selective over what got in, and what didn't.

 The pace of the writing also gave me far less time than usual to get distracted. There wasn't time, for instance, to do much historical background. Where I needed to get names or events straight, I starred them for later checking, and to capture the idiom of the day I did quick online searches. In some ways this is better than being completely thorough, because it stops the language overloading the other aspects of the story.

 Working with real events, and real characters, is both a useful shorthand, and a huge challenge. It builds context quickly, and lets you work on other issues, but it does raise ethical issues, and means some degree of substitution of names.

 This is clearly fiction, using fictive techniques, and many of the tropes of crime fiction/mystery novels - all invited by the events from the (real) diary. Yes, someone really did disappear from the New Zealand Contingent - although not quite as it happens in the story. Harold, the central character, did have his brother die during the First World War - although as far as I know, his ghost didn't appear as it does here.

 As for the other real incidents and experiences - you'll have to wait till it gets published, for those!

To read the opening chapter of The Contingent, go to the STORIES page in the menu-bar beneath.