Nearly a year ago (April 2020) , during the chaotic early days of COVID-19, I participated in Novel-in-a-Day (NiaD) for the first time! The other members of my writing group, Sam and Katie, seasoned NiaD veterans, invited me to participate. We were still in the days of quarantine, so we kept in contact via instant message during the process. It ended up being a lot of fun!
The way NiaD works is through some intensive planning by the coordinator who lays out the entire plot, chapter by chapter, and compiles the novel, all within 24 hours. Each participant is assigned a chapter, sent a chapter brief with minimal necessary information to complete their chapter, and away we go. Usually held in the fall, the special quarantine novella took place in April 2020. The coordinator of NiaD lives in the UK, so we had from around 6pm on a Friday night to noon on Saturday to complete our chapter and send it in for compilation. By 6 P.M. Saturday, we had a complete novella, created by writers on several continents! I'll admit that some chapters flow better than others from one to the other, but overall I saw a lot of great writing.
There were so many participants for this special quarantine edition that we ended up with seven versions of The District. You can access the various versions here. My chapter was included in the Orange version, Katie's in the Grey and Sam's in the Purple. When you are writing your assigned chapter, you don't know where it fits into the story. It was a lot of fun reading the other versions of my chapter within the alternate editions. I loved to see how disseminated the same information in completely different ways. I'll admit, I never read all of the versions all the way through.
In October 2020, our group also participated in the 'normal' NiaD, which resulted in a bit longer novel with only four versions. I have to say that I didn't love the topic as much for this novel, but I did enjoy the writing process. Sam, Katie and I spent a fun morning in a coffee shop working through our chapters together! On Your Honor can be found here. My chapter immediately preceded Sam's, which we didn't know while we were writing together! We are both in the Green version, while Katie was in the Blue.
If NiaD sounds like a fun writing exercise, anyone can sign up via this forum (you might be asked to submit a writing sample). Happy writing!
NiaD is stressful and fun. I like that you have a bite size portion to contribute, instead of a monster project like whatchamacallit in November. The only thing I wish is that you could read the chapter before yours before writing, to help with the flow. I why that wouldn't work, but it would be helpful.
ReplyDelete