Okay, so I got a little sidetracked there...

It's almost been a month since I last posted on here, and there's a few reasons as to why...

Firstly, NaNoWriMo began on the 1st of November. I managed to adhere to the schedule for a total of 5 days before I succumbed to the pain of writer's block. Sigh.

Next year, I'll do better.

If I'm honest, I wasn't too enthralled with my plot, such as it was.

That's a topic for another day - but I did get some good writing done on something that wasn't my previous NaNovel, which was healthy of me.

I am currently in the middle of the waiting stage of my UCAS application. I have two offers already, Conditionals for Edge Hill and Sheffield Hallam, and I have an interview at Manchester Metropolitan University's Crewe campus at the beginning of December - Bangor have received my portfolio and are currently (I assume) in the middle of reading through all of their applicants this year.

I am currently working on the portfolio I shall be taking to the MMU interview; they asked for specific things in their portfolio so I have to write a second one (the other two Uni's decided against portfolios). 

MMU asked for three paragraphs in first person which capture the voice of three different types of character: a child, a homeless person and an executive.

 Each of these people are looking into a fire: what do they see?

That was my prompt, and I shan't be divulging my paragraphs for copyright reasons - if they did an internet search and they found the work online they may reject my application, regardless that I've posted them myself. It's much simpler if they simply find nothing when/if they search.

To go along with this small task they asked for a small personal statement in which I talk about why I want to study Creative Writing at degree level - which will arguably be the hardest part, for me. I hate writing to sell myself... urgh.

However, the upside to MMUs approach to the portfolio is that they offer us candidates a chance to include a sample of original creative writing work of our own choice; a maximum of 1000 words, or 3 poems. But let's face it, my poetry is horrid (something I wouldn't mind remedying at University, mind).

I have something in mind which I think shall do the job quite nicely. It's also 200 words under their limit, which is nice. If I can prove my writing worth with 800, why not do it in 800? Those extra 200 words would probably ruin it, anyway.

Prepare your quills, ladies and gentlemen...

Preparations for NaNoWriMo 2011 have begun!

An A3 piece of paper with a diagram detailing the scenes I shall add daily.

I don't know why I never thought of it this way before, but 50,000 words into 30 days is 1,667 a day, rounding up... and that is everyone's daily word goal... so why not have 30 scenes of 1,667 words each?

It's simple, and easily organisable. So, I currently stand at twenty-two scenes planned.

However, I don't usually plan, and this is mirrored in this plan by the "plans" being sentences like:

Public hate the elitist mages for their power. Uprising. Mobs.

Not sure about you, but that's just about as ambiguous as it can get.

I've actually worked backwards, this time, too. Started with the end scene, and so this way I can work back to a logical starting point and not worry that it won't come to a cohesive ending.

Here's to success!
Happy writing, all.