National Novel Writing Month Winner

Well, I started on the 3rd November 2008, my plan was simple to write the first draft of a novel, to have a minimum skeleton of plot to start with and to drive it through with characters alone. On the 26th November, after morning after morning of writing (a habit that I had gotten out of until recently) and producing sometimes a few hundred words or a few thousand, I reached the ending of my novel. I became a NaNoWriMo Winner, regardless of this, there is nothing like finishing the first draft of a novel. A novel that 23 days ago was just a glimmer in my eye. It was a simple love story that involved SF, the future, the past and two people who found each other and the sacrifice that one would make for the other. At first it was about my protagonist’s family and then it came more and more about survival vs living. In this first draft I wanted to show that living was more important than survival for the protagonist, that it was the more practical option, soon I was introducing sub themes about men of vision and men or practicality, and how my protagonist has lived both these lives. I wanted to introduce a strong want and need, having a character who thought he wanted one woman but really needed to embrace his love for someone who really knew him. The twist? She knows him backwards, she has been travelling down his timeline watching him get younger, she is pregnant by him. But what kind of future could this couple have? Only a future that they could not predict, only in a history that they had never been a part of. So long live the past for the future is dead!

Now comes the tricky part, the rewrite and the editing.