Hello, this is your captain speaking. We are about to enter the month of November, and with it, the National Novel Writing Month. With this is mind, let me make the following statements:
Grymm's contest is still going, but I'm going to ask that entries be sent to textfight(at)gmail.com, rather than be posted directly to the site until NaNoWriMo is over.
As of right now I know for a fact that Gayleen, Gordon, and I are all taking part in the contest. I am pretty sure there are others.
For the month of November, textFIGHT is about this contest. I'll be putting a word count along the sidebar that posters can update. If you want to join in, please let us know at that there email address above.
I'm going to post daily on my progress, and thoughts on the process. By god, all, do the same. This blog made the 3-Day novel contest so much more tolerable, you have no idea.
Ril, are you in? Cenobyte?
Anyone?
So far as I know, G is writing a young adult novel using the same setting as her shortlisted 3-Day novel, Gordon is writing a Lovecraftian tale of some description, and I am writing my longest false document work ever. Note carefully how I'm telling you all in advance.
I will be posting what I write each day so that it can be read by the curious. Comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
I suppose I will now talk about my book a little.
On our last long drive, G and I were listening to this podcast about this kid and his mom who started a website. The website was designed to help kids who were conceived by sperm donation find each other. More specifically, it was so they could find other kids conceived from the same donor sperm. This kid found a whole flock of something like 8 half siblings, and now they have regular social meetings and get-togethers. It's turned out to be a great thing for them, even though they can't find out who the guy actually was. They are trying to legally force disclosure.
I had an idea to write a young adult novel with this premise because 50,000 words is pretty much exactly the right length for a YA novel. I had the plot and basic characters come on me in a wild rush in about the first two hours of the idea's germination. Where I'd been stuck was how to narrate.
I am very comfortable in first person, but the plot involves a lot of knowledge that the only sensible narrator wouldn't have access to. I didn't want another book with multiple first person threads so soon. So I'd been toying with third person, without a viewpoint character, but I think it's increasingly hard to sell the idea of the story with no teller these days.
So day before yesterday, I went for a walk down to the corner store to grab a refreshing beverage, and I chatted up the clerks there. Then, on the way home, I was thinking about the book, and the narrative problem, and how it fit into the Sel Souris cycle. I had one of those crazy moments of revelation that seem to come entirely from without, as though placed there by shoemaking elves.
I am the narrator. Me, as me.
On my blog around this time last year or the year before I wrote a long series of blog posts in which I took a plane trip to Sel Souris and met my (entirely fictional) half-brother and his family. It had some of the best writing I've ever done in amongst the chaff, and I've wanted a place for it in the cycle ever since but couldn't find it.
This book will contain a revised portion of what I've been calling "The Irresponsible Journey" as a foreword. It will then go on to involve a much longer narrative where my half-brother contacts me again because he has met a bunch of these kids who have a hell of a story. So Gayleen and I will get on a plane and meet them. The book will be a kind of fake non-fiction book with interviews and (if I can swing it, eventually) pictures. This second part is my project for NaNoWriMo.
I am, for some reason, really jazzed about the concept and think that it might be really cool.
So, my outline is sort of broken now, but my enthusiasm will, I hope, compensate.
Your thoughts, gang? Any comments on your own books?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I can tell you that one of my coworkers is on Team TextFIGHT for this year's NaNoWriMo, but she is blog shy and will probably not comment here.
G-
I'm not actually doing NaNoWriMo, but I decided I'm doing my own version: NaWriMo. The rules: The goal is for me to plow out 25,000 words of reasonably significant writing during the month (that is, excluding, for the most part, blog entries). It will be a combination of academic and creative writing, and can in fact also include re-writing (10 pages of revising will substitute for every 1000 words). Special note will be taken of query writing and especially projects that get done and out into the world.
That will average out to 1000 words (and/or 10 pages of revising) per day, excluding Sundays and starting today.
That's the plan, soon to be posted on my site (probably not till tomorrow, though). I figured, why fight against this academic work I need to get done? And yet why not seek to ride the excitement of the NaNoWriMo wave to get more academic work and even some novel work done?
So that's the plan. Yeah!
Due to school and work I'm going to be doing my writing in wierd spurts. Here is to my possession by a greater old one, and the inspiration it will give me.
-Gordon
No, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo.
Me neither -- I should, but I'm doing "I'm burnt out and desperately trying to dig myself out from far too many obligations".
Mo.
Post a Comment