My 2013 NaNoWriMo Challenge

Title: Metamorphosis

Short Synopsis (Updated): Girl meets a Medical-Alien-Robot and introduces him and his adoptive brother to her sister. Medical-Alien-Robot is on the run from his creator’s family known as The Raptures, who are intent on capturing him and his dysfunctional family of Androids and Shape-shifters in a bid to gain political power. The Raptures intend to capture the Androids and force them to resume their life of slavery and are willing to do anything to achieve their goals.

Blurb (Updated): Liliana and Louise Ashfield have spent the majority of their lives in and out of Hospitals because of Liliana’s genetic heart-defects. Liliana knows she does not have long, but her family are still living in denial of her condition. She just wants it all to be finished, no more running or hiding.
Drew Stone and Dr Daniel Dios have spent the majority of their life on borrowed time, constantly on the move because of the Dr Dios’s family situation, never knowing when they have to pack up and disappear, severing all ties with those around them, for their own protection. Dr Dios knows he has to keep his distance, least his power-hungry realise their location and exploit any vulnerability available.
After an incident at Western General Hospital, two different worlds and two different families start to intertwine in unexpected ways and Dr Dios has to make a fight or flight decision. He knows his Uncle Lucien will stop at anything to possess the AS 001, leading to an intergalactic civil war between The Holy Empire of Rapture and The Beastiary Rebellion. Will they stay apart and live, or remain together and face certain doom?

Word Count:
According to yEdit2 – 50,635
According to Microsoft Word – 48, 085

While I managed to update my word-count in time, I wasn’t able to validate my novel in time, I don’t know what I did wrong but every time I tried to cut and paste my text, the Validator-Thingy froze up and then it was too late. I know, I should have done it earlier and not left it to the last minute, which is what I do with just about everything. However, now that I have copied and pasted it into a Microsoft Word document, I have noticed there’s a 2550 word discrepancy, either I can’t add up word totals from yEdit2 properly (which is a possibility), Microsoft Word is stupid, or both.

I was kind of disappointed I didn’t get to the 50k mark sooner, I missed a few days and I social engagement take up 29th and the 30th, but I should have been better organised about the whole NaNoWriMo thing from the beginning. See, last year I barely managed to get to 6000 words before I dropped out and I vowed I would not do that again this year and would be better prepared. I did a ridiculous amount of research on novel outlining processes, printed out character profiles and plotting diagrams, downloaded Todoist (a to-do-list app). Then I did more research on other novel related stuff like “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov, the recovery process of a minor heart attack, and common phrases in Scottish Gaelic.

As you can probably tell, by the time November 1st rolled around, I had not even started my novel planning documents or written down any of my character profiles. I had come to the silly conclusion that I would have plenty of time for that later and never got around to it and unfortunately got distracted by research, which is one of my biggest procrastination problems. I end up doing all this research, but end up with no writing to show for it.

But I suppose my biggest disappointment is that even if the yEdit2 word counter is right and I did manage to type 50 635 words in one month, my novel is still nowhere near finished. It is daunting knowing that even though I’ve gotten this far, I’m barely half-way through. I was really hoping to have a finished manuscript by the end of November, so that I could double-space it, print it out and spend December editing my manuscript. I’m not under any illusions that just because November is over that means my work is done, quite the opposite, I knew I had to go back and add a chapter here, some description there, but I hoping that for once and I would be able to hold something up and say “FINISHED!”

It’s the same thing with my Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing, I have officially applied for graduation and now I am officially finished with TAFE and most importantly, I’m looking forward to being able to move on and do things on my own. Set up my own social media platform, post regularly on my blog, read all those books I have been meaning to read.

Last year, I was a mess; I was doing two jobs and two TAFE courses at the same time. I have an unfortunate habit of biting off more than I can chew and it left me with this resentful feeling because while I thought I had all the knowledge I needed to start up my writing career, I had no time to implement it. It was only this year, when I had a lighter study load and therefore more time, that I was able to play around with things, figure out exactly what I was going do and how I was going to go about it.
Ambiguous Pieces was an experiment for me, to figure out how social media worked, what kind of writer I would be and how I would present it to the world and while I wouldn’t say I have it 100% figured out, I now at least have a good idea of how to go about it. I’m sure it was pretty obvious to readers that I didn’t know what I was doing, and maybe I still don’t know, but I’m not going to let it stand in my way. I’m not going to live my life paralyzed by the fear of failure.

I am going to set up a separate Author’s Blog and separate social media (twitter and facebook) to go along with it. Before I was too lazy and intimidated by how much work I would need to put in, but now I am looking forward to building my professional author platform. As I consider this blog more of a personal blog than a professional one, so I might not update as often, but I shall see how things go, I might just decide my initial assessment of “too much work” was correct.

Before I go though, there are some honorable mentions I’d like to make:

KA and Emanuel: No matter how long I stare at this keyboard and laptop screen, I know I will never find adequate words that would truly do you both justice, but I shall attempt it.

Thank you so much for being you. The two of you have been such amazing company for me and I don’t think I could have gotten this far without you. This also applies to the patient and brilliant staff at Victoria University (Susanna Bryceson, Sheryl Clark, Tracey Rolfe, Robert Corbet, Michael Kitson, and Christine Nagel, just to name a few). There were many amazing people in my classes for the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing, however in the classroom you two stood out the most for me. You both encouraged and inspired me not to just keep going, but to be better, to continuously improve. Although I know, thus far, I am nowhere near as talented as you two are in your respective fields of Editing and Digital Publishing, but I hope someday I will be. I just have to keep going.

I would also like to thank the Book Chick City Team:
You guys were a big inspiration for me, I saw your awesome website and a lot of your reviews resonated with me, you’re the reason I wanted to start reviewing books on my blog to begin with, so thank you. In addition, your articles on NaNoWriMo were extremely helpful. I hope I didn’t come across as stalker-ish when I added you as a Writing buddy on NaNoWriMo, if so I’m really sorry.

I also wanted to do an ENORMOUS shout-out and grandiose thank you to Simone Haynes and his Spacejock Software. He has an amazing talent and I have lost track of how many times his completely free software has saved my bacon. All writers should check out his website.