About Nanowrimo09.

I don’t write enough.

Fitting that I’m going to write about writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about nanowrimo. I want to do it again this year. I was going to do it last year, but I met Candi, and that was a very critical month for us. By next month, we’ll have been together over a year. We’ll still have time together, I just know it’ll be more okay to spend more me-time writing. Because when I really write, I must have zero distractions. I usually kill the lights, listen to music, and just enter a zone.

My first two nanos kind of wrote themselves. I really enjoyed doing that. It was extremely cathartic. Or whatever that word is. Look back at your life, think about things that happened, good and bad. Think about the worst or best case scenarios. And run with it. I tried something different with my third novel. I’ve had two years to ponder what went wrong. It started out okay, like a bad running gag. The idea for the third novel was to write a story that’s like a campy NES rpg.

Much like with my third novel, I now want to write something different from my first two. I don’t want to just redux some same old idea that I’ve done before. But at the same time, I have to respect that as a part of being me, I’m naturally going to use thoughts, ideas, and patterns that I’ve used before. It’s inevitable. I discovered with my third novel that I’m not that good at pure fiction. I can’t make shit up off the top of my head. It has to be based on something.

Part of me is toying with the idea of The Return of BIGGAYDAN. Don’t know if I could sustain it for 50K words, though. While I never finished THEREPUBLICANMATRIX, the idea of having BIGGAYDAN go on the quest for the holy grail always amused me.

I wonder whether I can reach that level of immersion again I had with my first novel. I had goddamn dreams about it when I was writing it. It seems like a step back for me to write again from a childhood perspective. I’ve done that to death. Yet when I think about something more present tense, I draw a complete blank as for plot.

What went right with those first two? I think part of it was emotion. I put them through a lot of emotional shtuff, and as a result, came to know those characters very well. Growing up is naturally a very emotional time. And when I think about the present tense, everything is fine and stable. Which is dreadfully boring for emotional tension.

I remember being told I had a good level of detail. I think that’s because detail used to be my weak point. Rattling off witty dialogue is easy, but sometimes I have characters talk so much it’s almost like they’re in a vacuum. So I’ve learned to try and describe their settings, their gestures, how they say things. Shtuff like that.

:: rubs his chin ::

When I explain nanowrimo to people, I tell them that it’s an exercise in moving past writer’s block. It’s not about writing some great masterpiece. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about just getting something out, and doing it. It’s about getting past that rough point in your plotline, leaving it sloppy, and getting to more interesting things. I should remind myself of that. Who cares if I do what I’ve done before? I have a couple weeks until November. I’m sure I’ll find a happy compromise between the familiar and the unknown. After all, I’m sure I still have way more baggage than I’ve written about…

If anything, it’ll give me a month off from Everquest. : D

If none of this made any sense visit this site: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ I’m under Timmy™, as usual.

I may start up a mailing list like I’ve done in the past. We’ll see. Having readership is incredibly motivating.