NaNo was a success for me this year. In the end, I managed 51865 words of my next story. As always, there’s a mixture of feelings, relief and amazement that I actually managed to finish and sadness that I will be leaving the characters that I’ve come to know over the last four weeks.
To be honest, I found it a lot harder this year. I think it was because I was writing in a new style to my usual Sci-fi and I had to learn the rules of my creation as I went along. There was so much that I couldn’t use, the technology of the setting was entirely different and the characters were the first aliens I had ever tried to portray. I found that some of the constraints imposed by the world-building made the story that much harder to get down, although I also found that aliens have powers that can come in handy and give the story a very satisfying twist.
As you might already know, The Syk’m is a fantasy adventure, set in at least two worlds. As it says right at the start,
They were the threat of my childhood, the thing that made us all obedient. Behave, or The Syk’m will come and take you away, we were told. And it worked, we went to bed, put out our lights, stopped our shouting. Because we were young, we believed in The Syk’m, creatures who watched over us and could do unimaginable things. But it turned out that they weren’t the only monsters.
And with a first paragraph like that, I felt a little bit of pressure to deliver.
You can read Chapter one by clicking here
I also tried a new writing technique, I dictated a lot of the story onto my phone, using the speech to text feature in Microsoft Word. I hoped it would increase my writing speed and while it was convenient to get my ideas down when I wasn’t close to a keyboard, it brought its own set of problems. More about that in another post.
I now intend to put the story away for a while to let it mellow in my mind.
I need a cover image, the trouble is, I can’t find anything that remotely comes close to what I want. I guess I need to find a good designer and brief them, once I have a better idea of the message I need it to convey.
At the start of next year, I will revisit my manuscript, probably re-write a large amount of it and with a bit of luck, I’ll end up with a story that can start the journey to publication.
It only remains to decide what of my works in progress I should concentrate on next.
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I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.
Darlene Foster
Well done! That is a huge accomplishment.
Richard Dee
Thanks, it was an effort but I hope it’ll be worth it.
Chris L Adams
I’m familiar with those speech-to-text issues. Especially if you are using fabricated or unusual names, you can end up with a mess. Even normal language, with my hick WV accent, can become unintelligible when you read it a week or two later. I don’t know how many times I’ve read my speech-to-text notes (which I do constantly for writing so I can capture ideas before I forget them) and wonder: What the heck was I trying to say here?
Congrats, Richard. Sounds like you accomplished something great here.
Richard Dee
It’s a lot better than the old version of Dragon that I last used. Even so, it’s very different from having a conversation. Whether it saves any time is questionable and, as you say, you need to edit pronto.