Nanowrimo - Day 1
Nov. 1st, 2014 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zaelleCurrent Word Count (End Day 1): 3,681 / 50,000
Word Goal: 3,500 (w00t!)
And it has begun.
Yesterday I vaguely planned out 15 chapters, each 3,500 words long (more out of practicality and simple math surrounding 50,000 words in 30 days than for any other reason). Basically what that accomplished was giving me an idea of where to direct this month.
I'm going to be writing a summary journal entry at the end of each day's writing just to track and record the experience for future learning. Here goes...oh my I feel so tired actually. I can't wait to sleep.
I'm happy I went with the idea of not writing the entire novel I had planned in my head for Nanowrimo, but to break it up into two parts. I'm actually having a ball so far with Part 1, and I've just realized that it is by itself, ambitious enough. James stays in Japan for at least three years, and this story covers those years.
Also, in true 'me' fashion, 3,500 words in and the chapter is far from complete.
Plans:
Chapter One is titled: A Voyage Across the World.
Basically what this chapter covers is James' journey by passenger liner from London to Tokyo. The trip takes months. What I wish to do with this chapter is establish a few things:
1. The importance of British folklore to James
2. The Morgan family (I changed their names from Stewart to Morgan today, reasons below)
3. The end of WW1
4. The end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
5. The idea that this is a world with fresh beginnings
Experiences of writing today:
1. There is precious little information online about passenger liners operating between England and Japan in the early to mid 1920s. I suppose it is rather obscure, but they did exist! They had to. Civilians did travel between the two! I'm assuming that by this point, ships used the Suez canal to cut into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, rather than take the longer journey around the Cape of Good Hope.
2. There is precious little online about English folklore, which surprises me. There are plenty of places that summarize these folk-tales, but I'd also like a resource where I can read the stories themselves. Thankfully my sister went through a phase of great interest in the folklore from this region and she has these 2 big books she's loaned me:
a) Celtic Myths and Legends; and
b) Irish Legends and Folktales
These are by no means exhaustive but are useful starting places. I don't plan on repeating a lot of myths because that's cheating, but I do plan on retelling some, or as I spent this evening doing, using the tale of Maighdean-Mhara (The Sea Maiden) as a backdrop for the Morgan family's own origin folktale.
3. I'm actually having fun so far. It wasn't easy to churn out 3,500+ words, but it was not unduly difficult either. My voice and tone is having trouble establishing itself, but not in a lost way, more like it's just switching all over the place. But hey, this month is just about getting it down.
4. I'm glad that I chose this era. It gives me the liberty to provide my protagonist with a pretty strong mother character, just with the excuse that she was born in India as her father worked for the British East India Company. Women who lived in the colonies were used to more social freedoms and stature than they did at home because of their superior place in society compared to the locals (even local royalty). And it serves as an interesting reminder of how...some things really haven't changed.
5. I ended up changing the family name from Stewart to Morgan. It's not a big deal. I originally randomly picked the name 'Stewart' because it 'sounded English' to me. Ha.ha. It's Scottish. Not only that, it's a Scottish royal name (duh, I should have guessed...Mary Stuart). But it doesn't really fit the feel that I want the protagonist's story to have. So now they are Morgan. Morgan means 'of the sea' and is a Welsh surname. This suits me just fine as I have more options with Welsh folktales being added to the mix.
All in all, a nice start (a hopeful one anyway) and now I'm off to bed! Goodnight!
I hope that everyone else had great starts to their Nano projects!
Word Goal: 3,500 (w00t!)
And it has begun.
Yesterday I vaguely planned out 15 chapters, each 3,500 words long (more out of practicality and simple math surrounding 50,000 words in 30 days than for any other reason). Basically what that accomplished was giving me an idea of where to direct this month.
I'm going to be writing a summary journal entry at the end of each day's writing just to track and record the experience for future learning. Here goes...oh my I feel so tired actually. I can't wait to sleep.
I'm happy I went with the idea of not writing the entire novel I had planned in my head for Nanowrimo, but to break it up into two parts. I'm actually having a ball so far with Part 1, and I've just realized that it is by itself, ambitious enough. James stays in Japan for at least three years, and this story covers those years.
Also, in true 'me' fashion, 3,500 words in and the chapter is far from complete.
Plans:
Chapter One is titled: A Voyage Across the World.
Basically what this chapter covers is James' journey by passenger liner from London to Tokyo. The trip takes months. What I wish to do with this chapter is establish a few things:
1. The importance of British folklore to James
2. The Morgan family (I changed their names from Stewart to Morgan today, reasons below)
3. The end of WW1
4. The end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
5. The idea that this is a world with fresh beginnings
Experiences of writing today:
1. There is precious little information online about passenger liners operating between England and Japan in the early to mid 1920s. I suppose it is rather obscure, but they did exist! They had to. Civilians did travel between the two! I'm assuming that by this point, ships used the Suez canal to cut into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, rather than take the longer journey around the Cape of Good Hope.
2. There is precious little online about English folklore, which surprises me. There are plenty of places that summarize these folk-tales, but I'd also like a resource where I can read the stories themselves. Thankfully my sister went through a phase of great interest in the folklore from this region and she has these 2 big books she's loaned me:
a) Celtic Myths and Legends; and
b) Irish Legends and Folktales
These are by no means exhaustive but are useful starting places. I don't plan on repeating a lot of myths because that's cheating, but I do plan on retelling some, or as I spent this evening doing, using the tale of Maighdean-Mhara (The Sea Maiden) as a backdrop for the Morgan family's own origin folktale.
3. I'm actually having fun so far. It wasn't easy to churn out 3,500+ words, but it was not unduly difficult either. My voice and tone is having trouble establishing itself, but not in a lost way, more like it's just switching all over the place. But hey, this month is just about getting it down.
4. I'm glad that I chose this era. It gives me the liberty to provide my protagonist with a pretty strong mother character, just with the excuse that she was born in India as her father worked for the British East India Company. Women who lived in the colonies were used to more social freedoms and stature than they did at home because of their superior place in society compared to the locals (even local royalty). And it serves as an interesting reminder of how...some things really haven't changed.
5. I ended up changing the family name from Stewart to Morgan. It's not a big deal. I originally randomly picked the name 'Stewart' because it 'sounded English' to me. Ha.ha. It's Scottish. Not only that, it's a Scottish royal name (duh, I should have guessed...Mary Stuart). But it doesn't really fit the feel that I want the protagonist's story to have. So now they are Morgan. Morgan means 'of the sea' and is a Welsh surname. This suits me just fine as I have more options with Welsh folktales being added to the mix.
All in all, a nice start (a hopeful one anyway) and now I'm off to bed! Goodnight!
I hope that everyone else had great starts to their Nano projects!
