NaNoWriMo2005

Well, it's November 1st, and it's started again! The madness of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Mike and I stayed up and started writing at midnight. Good times. Two other girls are participating with us, Catherine and Meghan, but Meghan is super-busy (ah, aren't we all. We had our staff meeting today at work. Yikes. November is going to be our craziest month yet, especially with the basketball team).

In honor of the beginning of NaNoWriMo, I'm going to summarize my past NaNoWriMos for everyone's enjoyment. :-D The first time I did NaNo was 2003. I started Nov. 10th, which was craziness, and finished about three hours before the deadline. It was wonderful fun; I felt like I was being very prolific; and I'm actually pretty proud of what I wrote. The emphasis is on quantity over quality, but I think my 2003 novel is quite nice. You can do both, surprisingly enough.

2004: sucked. I think I got to 12,000 words before I quit. I just wasn't motivated. I got too far behind. I tried to write chick lit, and I don't know what happened. I don't know if I planned it out too much or if I just didn't have enough plot or what. The premise is kinda interesting, but I am obviously not the one to write it.

So I'm back in 2005 to try again. I'm thrilled to have people participate with me this year, and I'm thinking up all kinds of fun and crazy things I have to do if I do or don't reach a certain word count by a certain day. Like if I'm past 30,000 words by Nov. 15th, I'm going to dye my hair blonde(r). If I'm not at 45,000 words by Nov. 20, I have to introduce 5 new characters, and things like that. I'm going to try to go for 60,000 words this year, but I'll be pleased to win at all, especially with last year's poor performance. This novel is a little more light-hearted than my first. It's space opera-ish, sci fi but less emphasis on the technology and more emphasis on the people. Along the lines of Star Wars or Kathy Tyers's Firebird trilogy. I'm naming all my main characters after Shakespearian characters and all their gods after Greek/Roman gods and goddesses. I just named the leader of the intergalatic government (which falls apart immediately when he goes into hiding, so he's really a no-character) the Dali Lama. I'm definitely having fun with the names. The characters aren't all turning out the way I've expected, already. This one girl is supposed to be innocent and naive and kinda helpless. She's not really helples, and she has a demeanor of being naive, but I think she's got a little manipulation and superiority complex going on there. I've already got 2173 words done today (ha, got ahead of Mike by about 20 words), and my first class tomorrow isn't until 2:00 so I'm planning on staying up pretty late.

So enough blogging about it. I was going to work on my plot some (because I pretty much don't have one; darn Mike. He has a subplot already), but now it's time to head to class. Cheers, all. For you NaNoWriMoers -- Good luck.