Nano finish

Despite a higher than average intrusion of real life I managed to finish my novel for Nanowrimo this year. It was a close thing though. I found myself ten thousand words (one fifth of the target!) behind come yesterday morning. I started by spending some time planning that last ten thousand words and then got stuck in. I wrote six and a half of them yesterday, leaving me with a smaller target to hit today. I kind of went for it because I knew I would be out for this afternoon at my parents to see Debbie and family. And it paid off.

But is it any good? Well, probably not. It's quite a different story to ones I've been writing recently. It's not science fiction, but more of a straight, literary novel set in China in the early 20th Century. A time and place that I still find fascinating, and probably stranger than anything I could dream up for SF, it gave me a historical structure that always meant I could find some inspiration. The main pattern of the story came to me pretty much fully formed and I've mostly stuck to it. Despite deviations here, and the odd surprise, it's pretty much the story I had in my head and, looking back now I think that yes, it is good. Not in a letting anyone else read it kind of way, just yet. At the moment it's more like a pre-viz, or storyboard, for a movie. All the pieces are there, sketched out, but the actual film is yet to be shot. That's the next stage. Move it from the flat, cartoony writing that describes what I want it to be into the thing that it actually is. I'm looking forward to it. But for now it's time to read that Hellboy comic I treated myself to yesterday.