NaNoWriMo Day 8

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It's day eight of NaNoWriMo 2022 and my project currently stands at 24,600, with 3,000 of those words having been added today.

I had the pleasure of venturing out to McDonald's this morning, the first time I've been able to go out in two weeks because of the meds I've been taking. The laptop had to come with me, of course, because otherwise I would have wasted the time scrolling through BBC News or social media.

After having some doubts about my project, specifically worrying that I will run out of story before I hit 50,000 words, I tweeted for help and the wonderful writing community on Twitter came up with some excellent suggestions. One of those was to look at my character development. I have to admit that is an area I haven't spent nearly as much time on as I should have, being eager to get stuck into the writing. I've fully profiled Billy Butler now, and will take some more time to do the same for the other five main characters.

The other suggestion was to look at descriptions. These can do wonders for a scene and while I want to talk about adding depth, emotion, foreshadowing events, etc., I'm really plucking those out of my own head rather than talking from any depth of knowledge. I intend to do some online research about descriptions, because I'm conscious of the potential impact they can have. Some of the books I've read have gone overboard on description, though, and if you spend more time reading about the layout of a room than the events that take place in that room, it's off-putting - for me, as a reader, at least. 

I've played with describing Billy Butler's living room, using it to highlight the fact that he's sometimes compulsive and regularly skint. His walls are bare because he stripped the wallpaper off one night then realised he couldn't afford to redecorate; his armchair and sofa don't match because the sofa came from a charity shop and the armchair was pulled out of a skip. I haven't read anything definitive on this topic yet, but I'm pretty sure that description for its own sake is a waste of time.

If that wasn't enough information for today, I've also been looking at self-publishing, which is one possible option when I finally complete a project. It means that I could potentially call myself a published author and have an eBook for sale on Amazon even if it's complete dishwater - and I've downloaded one or two of those in the past if I'm honest. There are sites where I could promote my book as the deal of the day for just £95 to a mailing list of over 360,000 people - that wouldn't take much of a percentage to recoup the cost, although I have read comments from others who have self-published who say they've never yet managed to break even on a book. That's disappointing to hear, although it's altogether possible that they are pushing dishwater too.

Enough! If I'd added these words to my NaNoWriMo project instead of this blog I'd be nearing 25,000 now. 

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