NaNoWriMo 2016

So, I'm doing National Novel Writing Month again this year.

It'll be an interesting challenge, particularly when I compare it to last year's victory. I'm fairly certain that being underway for the entire month actually helped me win. Making time to write might be a little harder than usual, but making it a part of an established, heavily regimented routine was much easier than coming up with a daily routine that included the writing. No outside Internet probably cut down on the distractions, too.

Also, last year's story allowed me to focus heavily on world-building and dramatic battle scenes. In fact, it now needs what amounts to a complete rewrite, since I completely ignored my nominal protagonist in favor of writing cool things about the battles going on around him. I debated making that rewrite my project for this year, but I'd rather write something new from scratch than wonder whether deciding to include entire paragraphs from last year allows me to add those paragraphs to my word count.

Which doesn't mean I'm completely abandoning last year. I'll finish that rewrite eventually (maybe), and I'd always intended to use the fantasy world I created as a setting for more stories in the future. So, I get to take one of the minor characters from last year and write a prequel that talks about their backstory... and adds more details about multiple universes, and the magic system, and other things that have always been part of how I looked at this world, but weren't relevant last year. That's the fun part.

The challenging part is that this is a much more character driven story than last year. Basically all of the conflicts I've got right now are internal affairs or personality driven - I doubt I can even get much in the way of personal combat out of this, never mind the fleet combat that drove up last year's word count. Writing about personal trauma and how people react to it is... certainly possible, but it also makes me quite a bit more likely to question how well I'm doing or agonize about minor details of word choice and reaction. Which isn't good when you're trying to get lots of words down quickly.

Also, is it too much to ask for my favorite authors to not release new books in their series during November? I don't need more distractions... (and I'll probably happily read them anyway).