Snape, snape, severus snape. snape, snape, severus snape...

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It's November first. All Saints Day, and the kick off of NaNoWriMo.

Halloween is not an 'evil' Holiday, it is the day to purge the world of evil spirits so that All Saints Day can be pure and holy.

But, it's also the first official day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) (www.NaNoWriMo.org). Me, and over 90,000 other people, are joining in the psychosis that is writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I first heard about NaNo in 2003, but thought it was some kind of anime convention- lol. I first joined in 2004, but life jumped up and bit me in the face, shook me around a bit, and didn't let go until quite some time later. I tried again in 2005, where I re-wrote the outline and got a better handle on where I was going and what I was doing. Last year, I made it over 50K, and stopped a few days early! What a rush, even with set backs like my word processor corrupting my files, and randomly losing 2000 words one day. This year, I'm once again aiming for the win, but this year, I might actually make it to the end of the story! I'm so excited.

This story first started WAAAAYYYY back, over half my life ago, in 8th grade. I wasn't THAT angsty, but I was depressed, and alone, and so I started writing. By the time I was done, I had 73 hand written pages of crap written by a 13 year old. It was full of Mary Sues and plagarised events, but it was a good start. After many years of edits, I gave up, wrote down the basic plot, and started over from scratch. Still wasn't getting to far, and that's when I discovered NaNo and have made some extreme progress since then.

I have ALWAYS hated the beginning of this story. I tried a few different things, and kept scrapping them, such things as an introduction, grandma telling a fairy tale and a discourse by a historian- all scrapped. A major improvement was made in 2003ish when I changed main characters. I've always enjoyed stories that start with a bang, so I tried that, but people kind enough to read it either didn't care about my main character, or even HATED her. I had a single paragraph about a redshirt and people liked him more than the main character! I tried to back the story up a bit, give her some back story, and readers still just weren't feeling it. No one cared.

I got to where I'd been over those beginning pages so often that *I* hated them. I didn't want to touch them, but I HAD to have a good opening if I ever hoped to catch the eye of a publisher. And then, a few days before NaNo this year... I had a shower epiphany. (one of those great thoughts thunk up while under the water spray) I did need to start with a bang, but I'd been starting with the wrong bang. I wasn't tired of dealing with the beginning because I had been over it too many times, I was tired of dealing with that beginning because it was freaking BORING!

So, all those 'beginning chapters' that I've had people reading over? You will never see them again. Not in that form anyways! I'm ditching it all. WHOO HOO! GONE! the few "good scenes" that came up in those (like the Ditiopi scene, if you got to read that, it was great) will be recalled, or told to others as a rememberance (not an actual flashback), so they won't be completely lost. But all the backstory, that will come up to inform the readers later on in the book. I think it's going to work. FINALLY, I think it's actually going to work!

MWAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

I'm excited.

P.S. I got exactly 2500 words written today!

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