National Novel Writing Month 2023

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has arrived. I’ve been competing in NaNoWriMo for several years now but if you are unaware, the aim is to write fifty thousand words over the thirty days of November. This divides down to one thousand six hundred and sixty-six words a day or five hundred and fifty five words three times. While this may prove an easy target for some writers, a large aspect of the competition is meeting other writers in the wild as it were and fostering a positive creative community.

So far this year I’ve been working on short stories and flash fiction pieces so it will be nice to tackle a longer project. I’m planning to complete (or least take a good stab it) the first draft of a novel that has been rattling inside my mind for years. It’s called Old Dogs. Here’s a two sentence synopsis.

After a successful heist at the British Museum a family of career criminals, led by a retired mastermind, accidently create a hostage situation on the London Underground’s Central Line during a heatwave. Trapped beneath ground with the temperature rising and with the world watching, the family must put aside their differences to survive. (1)

A majority of the story will be set on the Central Line between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus. Fortunately, one of the normal writing spots for the London NaNoWriMo group is a Pret A Manger, two minutes away from Oxford Circus tube station. That’s handy, especially when you consider that my other work in progress, The White Wasteland, is set in Antarctica!

If you want to follow my progress on NaNo please check out my Twitter feed which you can see on the right hand side of the page. If you are also taking part in NaNoWriMo this year, I wish you the best of luck and I’ll see you at the finish line.

(1) I want to point out that I had the idea for Old Dogs long before it was revealed in August that a staff member had been stealing artefacts from the British Museum. Irritatingly, the Central Line now has free Wi-Fi so my novel will have to be set before it was installed. I can worry about that in later drafts.