Bidding Farewell to NaNoWriMo 2009

[Debra A. Kemp]

December 1 is always a little sad for a WriMo (a writer who participated in the literary frenzy of National Novel Writing Month). And so I am sorry it is over. This was one of my better years at it. Lin was in a very chatty mood and I got some progress for book three of the House of Pendragon series.

I'm really proud of two scenes in particular. The first was brought to me by the NaNo-torious Traveling Shovel of Death ( A NaNo tradition of sorts!), and will come early in the flashback portion of the book, like the day after here knighting ceremony. Some dude tries to corner her in the stable, with one thing in mind. She has no choice but to defend herself, right? But she isn't in her armour, so she grabs what's convenient--a shovel and she whacks him on the head. It's a shovel, in horse stable. It's the Dark Ages--of course he dies.

The other scene I actually swore I would never do. In the Morte d'Arthur, Gareth marries Lyonesse. Well, I have mainly just been borrowing from Sir Tom and not following so closely and I just didn't want to deal with that. NaNo '09 changed that for me. I started to write a scene with a dwarf because it was a running joke in my local writer's group. Next thing I know, the dwarf is reminding Gareth of his troth to the Lady Lyonesse and that said lady is just outside of Camelot! In front of Lin! (And she has a knife this time.) But it was such good writing, especially since I was writing on the fly! Not sure where that will work into the story, but the conflict is just too good to drop!

Anyway. Now it's time for me to take a deep breath and go back over what I wrote for NaNo and smooth it out. And earlier today I found myself writing a sentence with Lin referring to Dafydd, and I had to stop myself from writing the rest of the padding I had devised: "who was really my foster brother but to me he was the true brother of my very heart and of my very soul." Typing it in November always had me laughing out loud because it was so rediculous. Now I kinda miss it.