Disclaimer: I do not own anything besides the plan to have Hermione participate in this madness. Applies to the entire story.
This was my contribution to NaNo WriMo this year (my third year) and the first time that I hit the 50k word mark in 15 days. It was a very fun story to write but it needs a lot of editing, so I will post completed chapters as I go through the editing process. The story is complete, so there will not be an excessive wait or any abandonment.
Hope you enjoy!
Hermione Granger Does NaNo WriMo (National Novel Writing Month)
Chapter One
In Which Hermione Commits to Thirty Days of Literary Abandon
September of the Golden Trio's 7th year was a joyful time – the pressure of their NEWT studies had yet to set in, Voldemort had been defeated and the wizarding world saved the summer before, and the Quidditch season had yet to begin.
Still, even in the relative peace of the beginning of another term, Hermione Granger was looking into ways to make her last year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry more exciting, challenging, or interesting than it was going to be on its own. Of course, that meant that she was going to make it more stressful than it needed to be already, but when had that ever stopped Hermione Granger? After six previous years of action, adventure, and drama as a result of her friendship with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, Hermione dreaded the idea of being bored.
Hermione was so far ahead of peers in both intelligence and maturity that the standard curriculum for seventh years at Hogwarts could practically put her to sleep. Had it been permitted by the Board of Governors and the Ministry, Hermione would have happily aced her OWLs in 3rd year and her NEWTs in 5th year.
As it was, Hermione completed the required reading and assignments for the fall term over the summer, even while they were busy fighting and defeating Lord Voldemort and his dreadful Death Eaters. The young woman was amazing in her focus and time management. If only the other students were receptive to learning a thing or two from her, they would all be doing much better in their studies than they were.
Due to the limitations in the current curriculum, Hermione was looking into something her Muggle neighbour mentioned at a barbeque at her parents house during her last visit home. It was something called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. The concept intrigued the young scholar and she felt the desire to participate in the challenge.
The challenge consisted of writing a fifty thousand word novel during the month of November. Starting at midnight on November the first, one was to begin writing a story of their own design with the goal of reaching fifty thousand words by 11:59 the night of November the 30th. The official rules required that the story being written had to be fiction and have not been started prior to November the 1st. Preparation of characters, locations, outlines, etc. prior to November the 1st were at the author's discretion, but the actual writing was to begin on November the 1st, and anything written prior to then was not to be included.
Apparently, people all over the world participated in this 'Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon' and there were blogs, groups, things called write-ins where people met up to write together, and online support for the whole process. People all over the world linked up with one another to become writing buddies and provide encouragement, inspiration and support during the month.
Hermione even read one story about two people from either side of the pond that became writing buddies during NaNo and hit it off so well that they stayed in touch and eventually got married. It was quite inspiring, really.
Upon discovering this fascinating phenomenon, Hermione felt herself inclined to prove that she could not only make the goal, but go far beyond it as well. The whole spirit of the challenge and competition appealed to her.
During the month of September, once Hogwarts was back in session, Hermione spent her spare moments trying to think up a plausible plot line that she could legitimately carry through with during November.
Oh, how she wished that a muggle computer would work at Hogwarts! It would make writing so much easier! Writing everything out by hand was very time consuming, something her friends noticed very quickly.
Harry, Ron, and Ginny could not understand what she was working on already as the term had only just begun and very little was assigned by the professors so far. Hermione, of course, brushed them off and pretended that she was just working extra hard on her future assignments. Her friends just shook their heads and said she was batty. Brilliant, but batty.
They were used to that sort of over-achieving behaviour from Hermione after all those years. However, that did not stop them from nagging her to put the extra work down and join them for fun.
Hermione was relieved once Quidditch practice started in late September. She was able to devote her spare time to developing ideas for a story suitable enough to inspire her to write without having to explain herself to her friends.
Hermione spent her evenings sitting in her Head Girls room – which included a rather decadent settee in front of the fire that made for a very comfortable place to brain storm ideas – tossing out plot after plot.
A tale of a girl struggling with social anxiety as she worked her way through boarding school – boring!
An erotic romance between a pirate and a kidnapped maiden – cliché!
A vampire's struggle to change his ways – ugh, please!
A vampire/human teenager love story – Merlin no!
A murder mystery equivalent to a game of Clue – sounded fun, but Hermione knew that it would be a large undertaking for her first round of National Novel Writing Month. Perhaps she would save that idea for next year if she decided to compete again.
Her ideas were mundane at best and already over used by real, published authors. The one idea had merit but even Hermione could admit that it would be beyond her talents for her first round at this competition. She had to come up with something unique that would motivate her to write the story in record time. It did not have to be publishable, as she was not overly focused on that right now. Perhaps, if this National Novel Writing Month adventure was a success, she would look into competing again next year and worry about writing a publishable story at that time.
Deciding to take a cue from her own life, Hermione thought about interesting things that have happened to her and her friends. So many story opportunities there! Thinking about exploring the castle and finding Fluffy in their first year, to getting herself frozen by a basilisk in her second year, the shenanigans with Remus Lupin turning into a werewolf and Sirius Black escaping from Azkaban in her third year, the Tri Wizard Tournament and Voldemort coming back in fourth year… the list went on and on.
There was so much to write about from her own experiences that she could easily create a story based on her own life. With that in mind, she began writing out a timeline for the story and an outline. She developed her characters and came up with amusing and interesting names similar enough to their actual ones.
In the end, she came up with a plan to write about a young girl who finds out she is a witch and is sent of to a special boarding school. The novel would be a story about this young witch's adventures through out the seven years of her schooling at the magical boarding school. Hermione planned to allude to small parts of each year and focus on the last two years at the school when the young witch becomes a woman.
She spent copious amounts of time painstakingly laying it all out in order to make the actual story writing that much easier.
By mid-October, Hermione had her prep work completed as much as she could without actually writing the story. She had developed her setting to be similar to Hogwarts with a lake and a forest, a magical town nearby, and an interesting mix of witches and wizards. The best part of the whole prep work was coming up with interesting names for places and people. Hermione prepared a list of such that provided her endless moments of entertainment.
Part of her plan required her to keep things synonymous with her world so that only names for things changed, not the things in the story themselves. She had never tried writing fiction before, so Hermione thought it best to make the process simple and manageable. She was not convinced that her imagination was developed or inventive enough to come up with the settings, characters, name, etc, on her own.
Near the end of October, Hermione set the novel prep aside and focused once again on her school work. With a few days left to go before November the 1st, she wanted to make sure that all of her school work really was set before the insane writing began.
Even though she had been so far ahead in her studies, she still felt a lingering regret that she had not been giving her usual one hundred and ten percent the past couple of weeks. There was always the random pop quiz or last minute change to a syllabus that for which she had to be alert and prepared. Besides, what could it hurt to re-read her assignments and texts?