Who are you?
I am a copywriter and aspiring novelist from the American South. I am involved in my local church with my wife of nearly three years, where I have lately been writing the dramatic scripts for our cantatas and special services. I am coming up on a year out of my graduate program in Creative Writing. In addition to my job as a copywriter, I am part of the editing and writing staff for the Tolkien-based journal Silver Leaves.
Why did you pick NaNoWriMo to consume your November?
I first participated in NaNo in my senior year of high school. I wrote a sequel to my first novel and ended up writing into the beginning of January despite meeting the 50k goal in November. I tried NaNo a couple of times in undergraduate, but was never able to get very far due to time constraints with school. I tried again one year in graduate school, but the work load was still too much. This year, I was determined to finally accomplish another NaNo, so I signed up. I had finished a read-through of my first draft of the first novel in a series I'd been trying to get written since halfway through my undergraduate courses, and NaNo gave me the opportunity to get a first draft written of the second novel, which had been clamoring for the past year to be written.
What was your novel about? And why did you pick that?
Albion Apparent is about a young wizard named Merlin, a descendant of the Merlin of King Arthur's time. In this book, Merlin is dealing with the aftermath of his first year at the local school of magic, which ended with him facing down a dragon and a mortal classmate who'd been ensorcelled. Among the issues Merlin and his friends have to deal with this year are an army of golems hunting down the descendants of the Round Table knights and a sorcerer who cuts the school and its occupants off from the rest of the world, trapping mortals and wizards alike in close quarters where disagreements and danger are sure to run high.
What is your typical writing process like?
For novels, I typically pre-write as much as possible. I work out the basics of the plot from beginning to end, sometimes with details down to conversations. I also try to have the characters established in my head before writing too far. When I can, I pass what I've written on to an alpha reader before doing a read through to make my own notes for changes. Then I go back for a re-write and repeat the process.
How did your month go?
I finished despite being sick for the first week of the month. I had to really push some days to make up for the lost time, but in the end I was able to meet 50k.
What was the hardest part? What was the easiest part?
The hardest part was catching up from my illness and learning how to skip around in the narrative. The easiest part was writing the interludes that fit between the chapters.
What did you learn from NaNoWriMo this year?
That it's perfectly okay to skip around chronologically when writing a first draft, and that writing too much all at once can be a draining experience that sets me back farther down the road.
Where else can we find you online?
You can find my blog at elijahdavidauthor.blogspot.com and the website for Silver Leaves is
http://olorispublishing.com/products/silver-leaves-journal. Check out both for updates about me and my writing and about what's happening at Silver Leaves.