Bernadette Benda

Um. Hi.

Nanowrimo is over and well – I did not succeed *bum da tisss*

I ended at 34,000 (which is better than last year). What did I write? Could I have done anything better? Am I still alive? (answer: debatable).

What was the novel that I worked on? Well –  it’s a fantasy novel entitled Oh, Wonder Why the Sun Fell. 

It is a story about a Clock (Celgarian) which Time has been tethered to, a curse of darkness, light bulbs, cities and mountains, wolfhounds, palaces full of baroque painted hallways, and rebellions. 

The main cast is Queen Alessandria (the antagonist), Bellbreaker (a smuggler and *spoilers*) Eyre (the Keeper of Celgarian) Refugio (a young smuggler who specializes in magical objects) Scorpio (a friend of Bellbreaker’s who is immortal *long story*), and Blater and Bliter (Bellbreaker’s wolfhounds).

Why didn’t I win?? (this is the REAL question after all) Put simply, November (and December) is the busiest month of the year for me and it keeps escalating the closer to Christmas. Between Nanowrimo, my retail job, my Etsy shop, and performing in the Nutcracker life gets a little frantic and I start running around like a chicken with my head cut off and Nanowrimo falls to the side WHAT I HAVE OTHER STUFF TO DO OKAY. 

The beginning of November was not so chaotic and doomsday-ish. I think if I pushed more in the first few days (maybe 5,000 – 8,000 words a day??) I may have been able to succeed.

I plotted very little this year. I honestly sat down at the computer and pounded out an outline that reached about midway through the book. Got stuck, and decided to call it a day.

Sure enough, I wrote past that outline and – things got a little crazy and my characters got sucked into different dimensions and now there are dragons and monsters flying in the sky. 

But every story is better when there are dragons. So there.

Oh, Wonder Why the Sun Fell will probably be put aside till summer.  I still have to finish editing Silver (which I just got back to looking at this week and seems to be coming along nicely). AND, the Green Crow is still in the editing works (that monster has been sleeping for over a month and I haven’t dared to wake up yet).

Right now (at least till January) I think I’m going to focus on Silver as it’s the smallest of all my projects right now. 

How about YOU?? How did Nanowrimo go? Did you win? Make it halfway??

Ciao!