"Why not?"
So we booted up the computor, opened a word document and... were interrupted after a few minutes when something else for the wedding needed to be done. Over the week I continually tried to plot out my story and every time something happened. We had people to dinner, the wedding happened, we all got sick and so on. But the day before NaNoWriMo started I sat down and remained glued to my computor screen until I had banged out a sort of plan. Then, feeling very pleased with myself, I switched off the computor and went to do something else.
NaNoWriMo started, I hit the power button, opened up my plan and... it wasn't there. I'd deleted the whole of my plan by accident. Only a few notes on the characters and the story remained to show that I'd spent ages planning. NaNoWriMo was upon me and I had no plan. I flipped to my empty word document that was waiting to become my novel. I clicked back on the missing plan.
"Oh well," I thought. "I'll just have to make it up as I go along. I didn't like that plan much anyway."
I had a vague idea what was supposed to happen in my story so I just shrugged and began to type. Words started to trickle out of my fingers and onto the page and I giggled quietly to myself as some ridiculous characters jumped into the story with both big feet.
When we were finished for the day Imogen and I decided to do some drawing for a break. Imogen whipped out her sketchbook and was happily drawing away but I had no ideas. If I didn't want to draw a fairy or anything like that, what did I want to draw? I just sat there doodling away. As something vaguely head-shaped appeared on the page I started to take a little more interest. A roundish body joined the head and I added some stick thin arms. When a couple of huge feet and a mug of hot chocolate on a tray appeared I knew who it was. It was one of my NaNoWriMo characters, big nose and all.
Over the next few afternoons and evenings I added similar pictures to the first. My main character turned up, a few sidekicks joined her. I whipped out the inking pen and drew over my sketchy lines. I tipped out my colouring pencils and picked out suitable colours but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted more colours. I needed at least three shades of red on one picture. Finally I had a cast of crazy, wonderful, magical characters sitting in my book.Since I'm so pleased with them I decided that I'd scan them and share them on my blog.
