NaNoWriMo

I’ve decided that this year I would try to take part in NaNoWriMo. What is NaNoWriMo? This stands for National Novel Writing Month. It starts on the 1st of November and the goal is to write a 50,000 word long novel from scratch in one month. That means an average of 1,667 words per day. 

I’ve been wanting to do it for some time, because it sounds like an exciting challenge. So this year, I’m taking the plunge. 

To play by the rules, the novel you write for NaNoWriMo has to be one on which you have not started yet. You can research, plan and outline it beforehand, but you must not have started to write it before the 1st of November. So that means that, by the end of November, I could find myself with yet another unfinished first draft to add to my collection. 

I was tempted to do this challenge with one of my works in progress. However, I remembered a story idea I’d had some time ago and thought it would be a good opportunity to see what I could make out of it. 

What is this story? Well, it will be set in the 18th century, in the 1770s probably. Part of it will be in England, and another part in Cochinchina. Working title: The Orchid Collector. I still have a lot of research to make. I know who the main characters (two of them) will be, but I still have to work on secondary characters. And several historical points will have to be elucidated. I’m working on the outline now, chapter by chapter, in order to make the actual writing, when it starts, easier. 

I first had this story idea when I was visiting historical greenhouses in Paris and reading the historical facts about the explorers and botanists who travelled all over the world to bring back rare and precious plants. I thought it would be fun to write a piece of fiction about one of those explorers, about this quest for the beauty of the natural world. All the more so since I love orchids (but I’m very, very bad at cultivating them. I’ve got a few sad looking Phalaenopsis that have not flowered in years and struggle to survive). 

I’m quite excited about this challenge. Maybe I’ll even manage to complete this novel!