Tag: NaNoWriMo

Greatest Hits: Nessun Dorma – Giacomo Puccini

With the humblest of apologies, dear readers, I’m going to plead out for today’s Song Title Challenge. All my creative energies at present is being channelled into the novel and while I have a song title waiting in the wings, I am completely unable to think of anything to do with it, even if I ignore the genre. Bumblepuppies has me stumped for the moment.

To make up for it, I’m pointing you to the very first Song Title Challenge I did here. I posted this way back in May so I reckon a lot of you haven’t seen it yet. This particular challenge is also one of two that served as the inspiration for the current novel.

Enjoy, and if you’re up to it, take part yourself.

Song Title Challenge #1: Nessun Dorma by Giacomo Puccini

A Ghost Story

As you will see from the widget on the homepage I’ve made a fair amount of progress on my novel since my previous post two days ago, but I’m still behind and today has been a waste. I’ve only managed five hundred words and I’m almost certain they’re not going to survive long enough to make the second draft. At least my stats page now predicts my novel (or the first 50k) will still be completed this year, which gives me hope, kind off.

Sadly, I’ll also be missing tomorrow’s Writing Marathon as I’m again attending a workshop, this time in counselling traumatised children. Maybe I’ll grab a six pack of Red Bull on the way home and join the marathon in the virtual sphere as it starts in the US. I’ll see.

I know I’ve been neglecting the blog as well, not delivering the stellar content that you, my dear readers, have grown used to. Deal with it. I’m writing a novel here. However, I will give you a little something to make up for it: an extract from my brand new novel. Keep in mind, it’s only a first draft, so it still needs a lot of work. You can also read a brief synopsis of the novel if you visit my NaNo author page. Then come back here and tell me what you think of the story.

The Legend of the Ghost of the Magoebaskloof Continue reading “A Ghost Story” →

NaNoWriMo thus far

I must say, my NaNoWriMo has gotten off to a very slow start. As previously mentioned, last week I attended a workshop on Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR for short, but more on that later), followed by a weekend at my dad’s, so in the first couple of days I only managed to squeeze out just shy of 400 words. Sunday and Monday were filled with family drama and I only got round to really writing yesterday. Even then it was slow going and I didn’t even meet my quota for one day.

When I updated my word count before bed last night the site informed me that at my current rate I’ll finish my 50k by 20 March next year. So far today I’ve managed to whittle that down to 4 March. I need to speed things up.

You can help.

Click here to find out how

Happy NaNoWriMo

Today is the official start of National Novel Writing Month. My trauma counselling course ended yesterday and the wife and I are spending the weekend at our in-laws (both her parents and my dad and stepmom live in the same town, yet we met 1500km away and only after my folks had already been living there for three years), so I probably won’t get much writing done. But today I’m sitting next to the pool with the laptop and am planning to make a decent go of it before the wife joins me here this afternoon.

In the meantime, may your NaNoWriMo not be characterised by moments such as this…

Chasing the Muse Continue reading “Happy NaNoWriMo” →

Prophecy

The novel I started writing at the beginning of this year (currently on ice) is a high fantasy with mages, magic swords and creatures that only exist in ancient legends. I’m planning to finish it still, as it’s the story that convinced me to start writing after walking around with it in my head for five years, but I got hopelessly stuck with it about seven thousand words in and I think the best approach for this NaNoWriMo is to start afresh.

In the meantime, here’s a scene I wrote about one of the characters. It wouldn’t have formed part of the novel, but was rather an attempt to get inside one of the character’s heads along with a bit of backstory for the novel itself.

Enjoy.