The End of Nanowrimo 2012

It's ended, and I won again this year! Hooray for me.  4th year of Nano, 2nd time winning. I really liked this year, it was very challenging because I didn't do my normal fantasy story, but in an awesome way.   I've learned that it's not easy to write Historical Fiction when you don't plan.  As an avowed panster the thought of planning makes me shudder, but a little voice has been telling me I should try next year. As you all know I did a historical fiction story about a movie director in the 1930's -1940's.    Last year I came out of Nano disliking my characters and so shut them up in my files of unfinished novels and haven't really looked at it since.  This year I still love my characters, and my story  but I'm ready to put them to rest and let them simmer for a few months.  
This year I somewhat finished!  I saw somewhat because I followed  the story line along till almost 30k (at this moment I can't remember the exact wordcount) and then I came to a wall that I couldn't break.  So I jumped over it, skipped it and wrote the finishing 10,000 words and then had to fit in  10,000 more words.  *sigh* It was hard.  But as you can see I did indeed win.  All's well that ends well.
Currently I'm just resting from writing and looking at some of my unfinished stories. I can't wait to get to work on something else.

Tommy Philips

Time to introduce you to another character from my nano novel The PianoMan.  Meet Tommy Philips.  He's easy going, fun to be with, always making jokes, and all around good guy.  He's done some acting before, but mostly he just hangs around with Stephan and helps his friend write scripts.
Then Jamie comes, and he sees that she can use some extra help.   He becomes someone whom Jamie can talk to, someone whom she feels she can be normal around.
At first I didn't really like him as much as Stephan and Jamie, but in the last few days he's really been a help to me.  I'm getting in a lot of scenes with him and Jamie, and then him and Stephan. He's a perfect middle man.  Which is unfortunate since he's in love with Jamie. I feel sorry for him, but it can't be helped.

Snippets of Nano

Hey peoples!  Yes nano has made me disappear for awhile, sorry about that.  But here I am, here to tell you that my writing is going...okay.  I won't say great because I've been stuck a lot.  I knew Historical Fiction was going to be harder, because when you're stuck in Fantasy all you have to do to get ''un-stuck'' is through in monsters, or ninjas or something like that. :)   So it's been going okay, I'm to 13k and I should be at 15k.  At least its only day 9. ;)   And  I love my characters, Jamie is amazing and I need to do more scenes with her acting.  Stephan is...well he's a bit of a jerk but that's only because he can only think about himself and his movies.  Tommy is a darling, his heart is going to be broken, I'm sorry Tommy.

Before I leave again here is a snippet of chapter 1.

Chapter 1


He sat morosely playing the piano, his black suit spotless and without wrinkle, his beautifully sculptured hands moving along the black and white keys with perfect grace. The scene was a pleasant one, on top of the black piano was a lamp, under the man’s feet was a Persian rug. The cottage house was quite, the keeper of the house; an old woman in her early sixties rocked in her chair with cat on her lap and knitting in her hands, she smiled at the sounds coming out of the piano.

The man had a dreamy look in his honey brown eyes; he had a touch of a smile on his face. He was a handsome man, with a dark melancholy face, high eyebrows, chiseled nose, and a mouth that endeared one to it; he was in his early thirties but he looked not older than twenty.

The music stopped abruptly, the man pulled out a cigarette and lit it, then began where he left off.

“That’s a nice tune dear, what is it?” The woman asked, her voice pure British English.

He sighed and said, “Oh just a jingle I made up.” He was clearly American.

“Well it’s still nice.”

The man glanced over at her with a smile, she was a silly old thing, but he didn’t mind her, she was after all his great aunt. He didn’t know her very well, only seen her once or twice at family gatherings, but he was a busy man so he paid little attention to old Aunt Jemina who knitted and talked in a high pitched voice and lived in the English country side of Dalwood.

Why had he left America? For the last twenty years of his life he had been working, first as an actor and now mostly as a director, he composed music, wrote plays and scripts, and was even working on a novel. The fact was he was tired. He was tired of the people, he was tired of the movies, he was tired of the paparazzi, he was just tired. One day in his office when every page of his novel was wrong, and all his actors idiots, he decided to leave. And leave he did, the next morning he bought a ticket to Dalwood, Devonshire England. He arrived on the door step of his aunt’s cottage with no warning and even less baggage. But she was happy to have him, and he soon bought more clothes. He had been in England for three days.