NaNoWriMo – From 3900 to 60 000

Leon Stevens

Oct 29

Are you trying your hand at NaNoWriMo? Nervous? Think you might not make it?

No worries. I didn't. Twice. But I kept writing. Here are some words of encouragement and a repost of my writing journey.

[Originally posted on Under The Radar SSF Books]

I didn't set out to write over sixty thousand words. The longest story I wrote before I started this trilogy was the short story The View from Here, clocking in at a whopping 3900 words which made it into my first science fiction book, The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. As with many short stories, it had an open ending that allowed the reader to extrapolate what would befall the characters. Although I was happy with the story, it did leave me wanting more.

I considered myself a short story writer. Perhaps because I am a slow writer, I don't tend to write long, detailed descriptions, and many of my story ideas come to a natural conclusion on their own. I accepted the fact that this might be my calling.

Enter NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. It was suggested to me that I give it a try, the challenge being to write 1600 words per day for thirty days. Now, I have done challenges before, National Poetry Month (thirty poems in thirty days) and Inktober (thirty ink sketches in thirty days), but trying to write fifty-thousand words was definitely going to be a challenge. I already had a head start with my short story and now I had incentive.

I set an obtainable goal: Write every day. And I did. I wrote over a thousand words in one day, which is a record I have yet to break. Needless to say, I didn't write the next great novel, but I had a good start on a pretty good story. So, as November passed, I kept writing for three more months until the novella, The View from Here, was complete.

It was meant to be a stand-alone, but I still had some ideas for the characters, and I knew the next NaNoWriMo was coming up, so I began to write the sequel, The Second View. As I was getting close to the 30K word mark, and far from the conclusion I had in mind, I made the decision that this would become a trilogy. Now, some readers don't like cliffhangers being sprung on them, so I published book two with the subtitle, Book Two of The View from Here Trilogy. So, no surprises.

But there was a problem. The way the book started contradicted the ending of the first book, so the solution was to add an epilogue to The View from Here, allowing the story to flow seamlessly to the next. If you have the first version of the book, hang onto it, it might be a collector's item in the future. Oh, and that version doesn't have page numbers either. Oops.

As soon as I published book two, I started on The Final View. With this book, since I ended The Second View on a cliffhanger, I had the beginning—well, the starting point—of the book, and I had already written the ending, so it was just a matter of writing the middle. Halfway through, I had an idea for an epilogue, which I have to admit teared me up as I wrote it. Who would have thought that a 3900-word short story would become a trilogy?

This is not an action story; it is an adventure. I hesitate to say it is akin to a Narnia story, maybe closer to H.G. Wells' The Door in the Wall, but it is a story of two people navigating their way though a new world, relying on each other, and finding friendship along the way.

I hope you will join in the adventure. You won't regret it.

-Leon

Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, and a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words.

My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/