NaNoWriMo Profile: Ashley Newell

Age: 25 

Hometown: Prince George, BC; Kelowna, BC; and Calgary, AB – basically western Canada

Occupation: Teacher

When/where do you write? I write when and where I can. Usually it involves many late nights.

Writing background: I have been telling stories long before I could write them. Once I got the pesky spelling issue out of the way, I became unstoppable.  A short story I wrote when I was 13 years old won in the youth category for a writing contest and was published in an anthology, and then I moved on to larger works. I’ve tried my hand at novels, screenplays, stage plays, and at one point I was convinced that I’d be a song writer… we shan’t speak of that.

Why NaNoWriMo and why now?  Peer pressure. Seriously. I was in university, all the cool kids were doing it, and so I took a deep breath and sacrificed many hours of precious sleep. That was back in 2008. I fear I may be addicted now. 

Genre (of NaNoWriMo novel): In short: drama. In the world of elaborate crossovers where I can’t quite make up my mind: crime-esque urban fantasy, based on the world and events in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

The novel I want to write: This one? I’m taking Wonderland and bringing it into a very dark place. Wonderland is a notorious nightclub that’s hiding a huge secret. It’s one thing to uncover the long list of illegal activity taking place within the club walls, but what’s lurking beyond the looking glass is far more terrible. 

Meet my main character: When his childhood friend went missing, Lewis Hatfield obsessed over where lost children go. Now as Detective Hatfield, he dedicates his life to tracking down missing children and bringing them home. Despite the successes he’s had in solving his cases, Hatfield can never let go of the ones still out there. He’s always searching.

Have you done any planning? I have sorted out larger events and characters in my notes, but I spend a lot of time with characters in my head before I decide if it’s a story that I’m going to pursue any time soon. If I can’t see the story, I tend to let it sit until it knows what it wants to be. These characters that I’m working with now are very ready to tell their story. 

Writing fears: Fizzling out. In six years of doing NaNoWriMo, I know that I can squeeze in time even in the most chaotic of my schedules. That being said, last year I found myself so drained and so out of love with writing my story that it wasn’t long before I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I dropped out at 15,000 words, which for someone who breaks through 50,000 each year, is heart-breaking. I never want to have that feeling again. I look forward to November novel writing like any other holiday – sometimes I even forget that I have a birthday lodged in the middle of the month because I’m too wrapped up in noveling. 

Writing hopes and dreams: All I want is to tell the story the way that it wants to be told. So long as I believe I can do that, I will. 

Ashley Newell will be blogging for us every week throughout the NaNoWriMo challenge. Keep checking back here for the latest updates.