Missed Opportunity -- NaNoWriMo 2022
Ah, November. Less than a week to go now until it’s November. All kinds of things happening then.
First off are the big ones. Election Day (Election Day 2022—This Time It’s Personal), Thanksgiving, Black Friday (Always the same day as National Buy Nothing Day), and it’s internet counterpart Cyber Monday. Also, the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year.
My childhood best friend’s birthday is November 25th, and the first time he told me when his birthday was, it was on Thanksgiving that year. As a little kid not thinking things all the way through, there were a couple of years where I thought his birthday was just always on Thanksgiving.
We’ve also got All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, Day of the Dead, Guy Fawkes Day, National Bison Day, Sadie Hawkins Day, and a whole host of other Days.
Several month-long things, like No Shave November, National Diabetes Month (and I think that diabetics should get a discount on their blood sugar readings in November so that we can safely eat more sugar-laden junk food – who’s with me?), NnoVVember (the LEGO Vic Viper build challenge, about which I shall write more on November 9th, barring a schedule change), Native American Heritage Month, National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month, and again, many, many others.
November also contains the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (November 22nd.)
And, for sci-fi geeks/nerds (and British people), November 23rd is the anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who. (You can expect a post on that this month, too.)
But
the one that we’re talking about today is, of course, NaNoWriMo.
What the Hell is NaNoWriMo?
National
Novel Writing Month. More commonly
referred to simply as NaNoWriMo. (Not
only because that abbreviation takes up less room on the page, but also because
at half the syllables of the full title, it also takes up less room in your
mouth.)
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At its most basic, NaNoWriMo is pretty much just what it says it is. A challenge to write a novel in a month. The first one happened in 1999 with a handful of participants, but since then has grown into a massive event with hundreds of thousands of participants each year.
People
who accept this challenge strive to write a minimum average of 1667 words per
day, ending the month with a 50,000 word novel (or the first 50,000 words of a
longer novel to be completed following the official event). If both willing and able, you can write more
than just the mandated 50,000 words for a longer novel.
The rules –
Writing starts at 12:00 am on November 1st. Writing ends at 11:59:59 pm on November 30th.
You are not allowed to start writing earlier than that, and must finish within the 30 day period.
In order to ‘win’, novels must be a minimum of 50,000 words before the end of November.
Planning ahead of time is allowed. (Even encouraged.) As are doing research and taking extensive notes on your project. However, nothing written prior to the official start time can go into your novel.
There is no restriction on theme or genre. Fanfiction is allowed. Novels in poem format are allowed. Metafiction and ‘experimental’ novels are allowed. NaNoWriMo defines a novel as “a lengthy work of fiction” and states that “If you believe you’re writing a novel, we believe you’re writing a novel, too.”
To officially participate, you sign up for an account on nanowrimo.org and update your word count each day. If your word count meets or exceeds 50,000 words before you run out of November, you are considered a winner. Submitting your finished manuscript to the site for a word count makes it official.
And what do the winners receive? Primarily you receive bragging rights, and the satisfaction of having written a novel. Sure, there’s also a badge you can download and put on your website, and a certificate that you can print out to hang on your wall, but mainly just the bragging rights and satisfaction stuff.
Winners also receive discounts on writer-oriented stuff from whoever is partnering with NaNoWriMo that year. Some of these discounts are for really good stuff, too.
Nobody
at NaNoWriMo will actually read your novel. You will get no feedback on it from
them. (I point this out because I know
someone who was all prepared to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge until they
learned that they wouldn’t be getting detailed feedback on their novel.
NaNoWriMo is a non-profit, and gets hundreds of thousands of participants a
year, with tens of thousands of completed projects. They aren’t going to be
able to read and critique those novels.)
The Best Laid Plans…
In the very first post of this blog, I indicated that I would most likely be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. (Spoiler warning: I will not be.)
Back at the start of the year, I really was planning on it. I was telling myself that this would finally be the year that NaNoWriMo would allow me to break through my dreaded writer’s block. (Okay, yes, I tell myself that every year. But I had a really good feeling about this year!)
But this has been kind of a strange year for me, and with every new development it seemed like NaNoWriMo was becoming less and less of a possibility for me.
The insomnia (which I’ve had for nearly a year now) has put a crimp into a lot of my plans, of which participation in NaNoWriMo is merely one. Losing two months of the year to the flu was a major blow to my personal TO-DO list as well.
At the beginning of the year I was assuming that attending this year’s BrickCon had a very low probability of happening. But when that changed, I then had MOCs to build for the event. (But before that MOC building could begin, I took three weeks off in late August/early September to prepare for an inspection from Salem Housing Authority.)
Then there’s the blog. If I were to decide to do NaNoWriMo this year, it would mean putting the blog on hold for at least a month. At this point in time, I can’t do both.
The blog used to be easy. The time between deciding to start a new blog and posting the first entry was a matter of hours. I made a spur of the moment decision, and then dove right in. I wrote the first thirteen of those twice-weekly posts in ten days. Right before this year’s Bricks Cascade, I wrote two more posts, and then right after that came the gap. No posts for five months.
After the gap, blogging was different. Much more time-consuming. I’ve got either two or three days between posts, and nowadays each post is taking me between two and three days to write. The blog has become a full-time thing for me. Part of the problem is that it’s been getting harder for me to write each post, which means having to spend more time to get the same end result.
(It’s taken me awhile to figure this out, but I’m pretty sure it’s the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Having that flu rattling around in my immune system for as long as it was has made the CFS worse. Moving the slider away from moderate in the direction of severe. Not all the way, mind you, but certainly in that general direction. One of the more common CFS symptoms is brain fog, and I think that’s what’s slowing down blog production. Which would probably slow down novel production during NaNoWriMo as well.)
I
suppose that if I were a sane person, I’d either take some time off from
blogging or cut down to one post a week.
But right now there are something like 20 Sunday/Wednesday posting dates
between now and the end of the year, and only five of those don’t have topics
assigned to them. So I can’t stop now – there’s stuff on the schedule!
NaNoWriMo and I
The first time I participated in NaNoWriMo was in 2005. I was eight years into my writer’s block at this point, and determined to bust through it.
I tried writing for several days, and when it just didn’t work, I gave up on writing the actual novel. What I did instead, was to write an outline for it. (Something I hadn’t done prior to starting.) But instead of your normal looking outline, I just sat there at the keyboard and started typing, talking about the story I was planning to write.
I ended up with a long description of my story (a lot of it out of sequence) that was more-or-less in storytold format. Like I was explaining the entirety of the novel I wanted to write to someone. Or just blogging about it. Did that count as a novel for NaNoWriMo? I decided that it did.
At the end of the month I took my weird-assed outline, pasted in the chunk of crap that I’d written when I was still trying to write the actual novel, and asked the word processor for a word count. That word count was 70,356. Enough to win.
I didn’t have an end product that I would actually let anyone read, but I had a sort of blueprint for a story that I was determined that I would actually write at some point. (And I will. I’ve promised myself that I will.)
You’ll notice I said nothing about just what that story was? That’s because it’s one of the three works of fiction about which I have said, “This. This is the project that I will be known for.” And I’m planning to do a post about what those three projects are before the end of the year. So, you won’t get to learn about it today. (But stay tuned.)
The next year, I became even more determined to write an actual novel during NaNoWriMo instead of a novel-length pseudo blog post about a story I wanted to write. In 2006 I was in the ‘let’s just write erotica’ period of my writer’s block. I had decided that erotica would be much easier to write, because it ‘didn’t really matter’. (NO offense meant to any erotica writers reading this. I’d had crippling writer’s block for nine years at this point, and was telling myself whatever I thought I might end up believing. Plus, I hadn’t been exposed to really good erotica yet. Just your stereotypical plot-free sex romps.)
I’m pretty sure that I’ve talked about this project before in the blog. “The Sex Lives of Edwin Dauly”. The main character was a freelance comic book artist working a day job in a copy shop and doing art at night. Well, the nights when he wasn’t having a ridiculously active sex life, that is.
I outlined a one day-in-the-life per chapter story that took place throughout January of 2003. Then I spent all of October obsessing over the first chapter. This was before all of the cartilage in my right knee went AWOL, and I was still walking every day. And on these walks – typically down to the post office and back again – I’d focus all my mental energy on that first chapter. Until I knew the details of what I was going to write front to back, inside out and upside down.
Then, when the clock struck midnight signifying the changeover from October 31st to November 1st, I sat down at the computer, opened up a new word processor file titled, “Chapter One”, and began to write.
And when I say ‘write’, I mean it. I sat there, and over the course of about a day, I wrote that first chapter. Probably because I had obsessed over it so much. Probably. It could have been something else. (Like fate letting me write for a little bit just to set me up for a fall. Fate likes to do that sort of thing.)
When I finished that first chapter, I moved onto the second. And continued to write. Had I finally broken through my writer’s block? I certainly thought so. For three whole weeks I thought so, as I continued producing chapter after chapter. But then I got up one morning, put my fingers on the keyboard, and nothing happened. Just like I’d gotten used to over the past nine years. My brain was firmly back in writer’s block mode.
Technically, I won NaNoWriMo that year, too. Not that it felt like a real win to me. More like I’d won a battle but lost a war. My word count for those three weeks was over 114,000 words. More than double the amount needed, and with a whole week’s worth of writing time left unused.
Every
other year that I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo (which is most of them between
2007 and now) pretty much all blend together in my mind. I pick a project. I
spend a month or more building an outline and obsessing over the beginning of
the story. November begins. I try writing for several days, but usually give up
by about day five or six when it becomes obvious that it just isn’t going to
happen that year. Again.
Preptober
Right now, most NaNoWriMo hopefuls are in the process of finishing up Preptober. The unofficial prelude to the writing challenge wherein you prep your novel for writing.
The first most obvious step, of course, is deciding what story you want to tell. Figure out your story. Choose your genre. Create some characters. Decide if your story will be told in 1st- or 3rd-person. (Or 2nd-person… if you’re insane.)
Making an outline (if you’re an outline following plotter instead of a write by the seat of your pants-er). Doing your research. Writing up character summaries and backgrounds and whatnot.
Examining your daily schedule to find writing time. Setting up writing software and apps if you’re going that route, or obtaining pens and notebooks and the like if you’ve decided on the more old-school approach.
If you’re a social creature, finding yourself a writing buddy. Either someone on-line or from real life who is also tackling NaNoWriMo this year. The pair of you can hold each other accountable for daily word counts and so on.
Warning friends and family that you’re doing NaNoWriMo this year, and that you look forward to seeing them again in December.
After
fantasizing about your book becoming a best-selling hardcover, then paperback,
then Spielberg movie, trying to decide which of your characters should be in
the first wave of action figures. Ooh,
or LEGO minifigures! (Or is that just me
who does that?)
MiNoWriBlo
Every year that I attempt NaNoWriMo, it all boils down to a single question: Which is more powerful? NaNoWriMo or MiNoWriBlo.
National Novel Writing Month, or Mike’s Novel Writer’s Block?
MiNoWriBlo almost always comes out the winner. Sadly. But as I said earlier, I had decided that this was going to be my year. Only it’s not now.
But
that’s okay. I’ve waited this long. I suppose that one more year won’t kill
me. So now next year is going to be my
year. For certain.
Return vs. Tales
Okay, theoretical question time. If I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, what would my project be?
Well, if you read my Three Projects post, then you likely suspect that it’s already been narrowed down to three possibilities. And that is correct. Although I can tell you right now that it isn’t going to be the as-yet untitled Keith Nemsen novel, because I haven’t nearly figured out that whole plot yet.
So… that leaves “The Return of Captain Bison” or “Tales of Straumgate” as the potential NaNoWriMo project.
When I wrote the first post in this blog and announced my plans to write a novel this year (most likely during NaNoWriMo), my assumption was that the novel in question would be “The Return of Captain Bison”, which I had just recently moved into the current three project rotation.
That assumption, however, was made with the idea that I would have months and months of usable time in which to hammer out the plot, and attempt to recreate (from scratch) all of the details from the long lost note files on the corpse of my old Macintosh.
None of that happened.
Which leaves us with one remaining possibility, that being the first story from “Tales of Straumgate”. Now, I haven’t had the time to develop any of that either. But… the fantasy metropolis of Straumgate (and the stories to be told therein) are all derived from my D&D/Pathfinder campaign world. And one of the staples of my style of Dungeon Mastering was always to procrastinate until the last minute, fail to prepare for the game session, and then simply make stuff up as I went along. (Not always, but a fair amount of the time.)
I
always think of myself as a plotter rather than a pantser, but I think that if
I were to write a Straumgate novel for NaNoWriMo this year, I would be relying
heavily on whatever pantsing muscles I have.
Does Tempting Fate Work In Reverse?
Why does it matter what I’d be writing if I was going to write this year?
Well, I suppose that it doesn’t, really. However, towards the end of August I posted a piece on the blog entitled Missed Opportunity – SHIPtember 2022. In that post I talked about the LEGO September build challenge, and specifically stated that I wasn’t going to be participating in it this year.
And then partway into September, I got a design in my head, and ended up building a SHIP, just like I said I wouldn’t.
Before I had even written that post, I had this post on the schedule for today. And both posts already included the words ‘Missed Opportunity’ at the front of their titles.
So: Am I hoping that the weirdness that is my life repeats its little trick of basically making a liar out of me after stating that I’m not going to do something? Am I hoping that partway through NaNoWriMo the brain fog clears and I’m struck with inspiration and the key to unlocking my writing abilities and producing a novel anyway? Is that what I am actively hoping?
No, of course not. Hoping for such a thing would be silly. As it’s so unlikely to actually happen.
But do I at least recognize that it would be nice if that did happen? Oh yes. Very, very nice indeed.
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