Sunday, November 7, 2010

To Nano or Not

Last month I decided I needed to take a break from my current writing project and tackle a storyline that has been brewing for some time.  As most of you know my first story EARRINGS OF IXTUMEA has a Latina heroine.  I wrote this story during the time I was a bilingual teacher and didn't see many fantasies with multicultural characters.  This is important to me as I'm part Mexican-American and very proud of my heritage.  More and more editors are looking for stories with multicultural characters too.  Tu Publishing is one of them. 

http://io9.com/5682953/inside-tu-books-a-new-publisher-focusing-on-multicultural-sf-and-fantasy-books-for-kids

So since this month is Nanowrimo, I decided this would be the perfect time to write that story. 

What is Nanowrimo?  It's National Write a Novel month.  What's great about this site is you have a month to write a 50,000 word novel.

Hard you say?

What I'm doing is setting small goals.  I'm also tying my internal critic to a chair and ignoring her rants that my story is one big ramble.

What's fun is I'm researching such topics as holograms, biosphere 2 experiment, chemistry, genetics, La Raza view points, and also watching the very cool TV show SCI FI SCIENCE.


My main character is Esperanza, one determined Latina who lives in a self contained world of the future.

 

Add Jorge and another love interest who right now is getting very impatient for me to get to that part of the story!

Here's my link to Nano:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user%252F434773

Another fun feature of Nanowrimo is there's something for younger writers too.  My own son is part of this.  I downloaded the workbook, which has great helpful advice on writing that story.  I love the part where younger readers 'draw' their internal critic, then put that picture away so that voice won't interrupt the writing process.

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/workbooks


Now it's time to get back to my story!


4 comments:

  1. That sounds sensational! Best of luck!

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  2. Thanks, it's been fun writing it so far. Need to map out Act 2 this week. Also just picked up very basic genetics books from library.

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  3. Both of my kids are doing NaNoWriMo too, the young writer's program is great!

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