I finished NaNoWriMo strong with 50,963 words, and found time to write for at least 30 minutes almost every single day in November! It was good to get the gears turning again, especially since the last couple years for me have been spent focusing on producing theatre and not writing novels.

I learned a lot this past month, and gained a lot of lost confidence too. I choose a project that was solely for fun, and that gave me a lot of freedom to write without needing the story or characters or scenes to be good in any way! Rather, I was giving myself the freedom to write a bad scene, or change something on the fly just so I could experiment with writing styles. After all, I wouldn’t have to go back and edit it later!

At the end, I got about half-way through the novel I had plotted for NaNoWriMo, but along the way had finally gotten the inspiration to figure out the details for the big novel I have been building in my brain since finishing Polarity. Here’s a little teaser.

There is a story that I am quite passionate about, but I feel like it always gets told wrong. Horrible situations are romanticized; ambigious characters are glorified; fear is flattened where it should be terrifying. I waited and waited for someone to tell this story right, or even historically correct. Finally, I decided that I would just try to do it myself.

Now, I didn’t want people to come in with their expectations. This isn’t a love story. It isn’t simple. And it certainly isn’t a kid’s story. So I had to find ways to mix it up, to subvert those expectations so that they can see the story that I see. A story about political intrigue. A story about slavery and manipulation. A story about great fear and good reason for it. A story where a young woman defies the men who try to control her and finds the courage to fight for what is right.

That’s all the clues I’m going to drop for now. I have been working hard on worldbuilding, pinteresting, and writing some short story excercises to get to know my setting and characters before I dive into writing in a couple weeks. I’ll be sure to share more tidbits with you as I go and I look forward to sharing this novel with you in the future. I hope you will see the amazing story that I see when you do.