NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

"For the first time, I thought I really might have something with what I'd written."

"I've loved mystery stories since I was a kid--both reading and writing them. But until I discovered NaNoWriMo, I never completed a mystery novel such that I could confidently say: I FINISHED. The result? After discovering NaNoWriMo in 2004, in 2007 I was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished writers of traditional mysteries, for a novel I wrote during National Novel Writing Month.

Here's the story: I started a mystery novel in college during a fiction writing class. It was destined to be one of the world's worst novels, so I abandoned it; but I loved two of the characters enough that I couldn't let them go. For my second NaNoWriMo in 2005 I wrote and finished a new novel with these characters. The following year I didn't win the NaNoWriMo challenge, because I instead delved deeper into the same story rather than writing a new one, but I spent that November with the same intensity as the previous year. For the first time, I thought I really might have something with what I'd written. As a fan and writer of traditional mysteries, I knew about one of the premier organizations supporting the classic mystery form, Malice Domestic, so I submitted my work-in-progress to their grants competition that December. I received a phone call a few months later that I'd won.

That exciting call came a little over a year ago now. Since then, I've used the grant to complete research to get the book right (the plot involves a historical mystery in a foreign country), written a draft of book two in the series (for NaNoWriMo 2007), taken some time to learn about the publishing business (getting involved with local writers groups), and am currently finishing edits to the novel this summer. it's been an adventure, and it'll be fun to see where it leads.

This is me:http://www.g2graphicdesign.com/about

And for any aspiring mystery writers, this is the Malice Domestic Grants program:http://www.malicedomestic.org/grants.html"

--Gigi Pandian

Gigi is a graphic designer, photographer, and mystery writer in San Francisco. She has participated in NaNoWriMo for the past four years, successfully completing the challenge three times.

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