A dark, and stormy day.
The kind of day to stay at home and read a cracking good story. Or attempt to write one.
It's the latter bit that has me antsy in anticipation. A couple of years ago, my much hipper friend from California (she's quietly hip, not stereotypically hip) told me about this thing- NaNoWriMo. Huh? NaNoWriMo. As in National Novel Writing Month. A movement started by clever people who looked at much of the country's weather during the month of November and thought there must be some way to escape it....
...Did my research and found out the first year the NaNoWriMo month was June, and then the second year they decided they needed to move it to the miserable weather, hence November... knew it had to play in somehow...
.... It began with 21 people in the San Francisco Bay area getting together, 'cause why not? and now it's a 501c3 with 310,00 adult participants in 2014, spanning the six inhabited continents. They also do extensive educational outreach.
The goal is to challenge yourself to write at least 50,000 words of a first draft to a novel, beginning at 12:00am on November 1st, ending at 11:59 and its final seconds on November 30th. Since its first year in 1999, the organization has grown and expanded, and really worked to build community, help curate the experience, and above all, encourage people to throw themselves into writing, for love, for joy, for fun. Brilliant, no?
That's certainly what I thought. And then I thought "not while I have this job." I would always have a show opening in the middle of the month of November, which would mean my hours would be eaten alive by Theater. So a couple of Novembers went by and I thought "someday." The day after I finished the job, I registered on the NaNoWriMo site.
Next Saturday will be that someday, and I am truly beginning to chomp at the bit. I have a title. That was the first thing to drift by. I have a lead character and a probable genre. A premise, even. And today I have a gorgeously terrible day to write. But it is my first time embarking on the challenge and I want to do it purist style- prep by all means, but no drafting until Nov. 1st.
So I have created my author profile, set up my novel, with the title and synopsis- and because I was puttering, even a cover image. I wrote to my friend to celebrate that I had remembered my sign-in password, and to passively put the thumbscrews to her to participate this year because it would make the process exponentially cooler if she were there. And because if I got a buddy, I would get a badge on my author dashboard at the site. But mostly because it'd more fun with the friend who led me to it in the first place.
I even went on the discussion thread dedicated to the community of people in Maine who are onboard this year- discovering that during the month of November, the Tim Horton's in Old Town is a hot spot for NaNo writers.
Now it is a little like waiting for Xmas. I fully expect to have my backside presented to me on a platter by the process of writing lengthy fiction, to pretty much fail left and right, and back myself into narrative corners, and generally have a big old mess by the end of the month- but it will be a glorious mess for the mere fact that it came into existence at all. And once you've done something once, it comes easier the more you do it.
Since I clearly feel like writing, and sharing, and generally rainy day puttering without actually vacuuming or doing laundry, here's what I have posted re: the November Novel to Be, which I have currently designated as a mystery. Which sweetly assumes I will manage to create a plot.
M.W. Hiltz
In a small town, you grow accustomed to death. Lusitania Pike's first experience was stepping over her mother's body on the way to school, her second left her not-quite-a-widow. Now a costume designer and seamstress, she navigates the waters of the local theater in the wake of the founder's sudden death in the middle of the summer season. As the community struggles to ensure that the shows go on, questions of legacy, belonging, and blame must be answered- or buried with the body.
This image editing and synopsis work is deeply reminiscent of how my cousin Torrey used to make trailers for films he'd not yet made. The Municipal Liaison for this area has already kindly messaged me to say it looks like a novel she'd like to read- Gentle Blog Reader(s), it is a novel I surely hope I will manage to write. The things I will learn...
Sounds like a novel I'd like to read too!
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