It’s National Novel Writing Month in November and I’m participating once again.
I started in 2010 and this will be novel number six.
In all candor I’m using this opportunity to push through on my current work-in-progress, which has sort of stalled out at 45,000 words. However, since the goal is somewhere between 90,000 and 100,000, then adding the concluding 50,000 in the month of November works perfectly!
In 2010 I finished grad school, and only had a part-time job. After grad school I returned to all the things I loved before academia sucked up every free moment. I started reading for pleasure and writing for fun. That first novel was a near-future eco-disaster involving time travel, future mutants, and ancient abandoned cities on Mars.
2011’s novel was an update on Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Tim is rich and generous, but when he loses his fortune he learns he never really had any friends and dies bitter and broke.
In 2012 I returned to gonzo fantasy with story about a girl and her dog. But, her dog gains sentience as they travel through weird dimensions, and then each have to cope with the new complexities of their companionship.
2013’s Swamp Ape spawned Denny and the world of Abdera, Florida. Several of the stories in the right-hand column take place in that world. When I complete the current WIP (probably toward the end of 2018) I plan to re-write this novel.
In 2014 I did not participate in NaNoWriMo. Instead I worked on creating a full-length work over the course of the year. I completed it, but this one really never came together. Some of the ideas were OK, but the characters never came to life. It was about a group of body-modification hackers who stumble across a government plot to deploy mind-reading technology across the internet of things.
In 2015 I tried my hand at satire and wrote an updated version of Candide, starring a sentient sex-robot.
2016 was a year for short story writing.
And, this year, I’m using NaNoWriMo to complete my current work-in-progress. I describe it this way on my author’s page:
“In the 1970s Annabelle Easley went from the rarefied heights of rock stardom and Rolling Stone covers to being charged for the murder of a popular New Age guru. This story chronicles her life of sex, drugs, rock & roll, and her awakening spirituality.”
There will be a widget in the right-hand column of this blog to chart my progress. You need to average about 1,667 words a day to successfully complete the challenge. I’m pretty sure I’m going to start out in the hole because next week is an extra-busy time at work. Regardless, I’m looking forward to re-visiting the challenge!