Tying Off Loose Ends

I’ve decided I want to use this web log to reflect on all my writing, not just on this up-coming WriMo. To that end, here’s some news about a novel already in progress…

With NaNoWriMo coming up I feel the need to get some of my other writing projects to a “good point” before I leave them behind for a month. The biggest thing I’ve got going on right now is an epic fantasy novel that’s been in progress since March. I won’t go into the details, but it’s called Jaws of Empire. At least, it’s called that as of now. I have bits and pieces of the first seventeen chapters. A few are complete, some are no more than a few paragraphs. Almost all of them have accompanying notes about how to clean them up slash improve them. The goal is to spend these last few days of October with those chapters, getting them closer to their final form. That’s what I worked on today. I looked back at Chapter the First. It’s about a young pirate lass (well, other people call her a pirate) discussing with her captain the anti-pirate efforts of the neighboring empire and what they (the pirates) might be able to do about it. I had written some description of the harbor and a scene where the young lady meets the King that I needed to integrate into the rest of the chapter. That’s now complete. It came out pretty good too! At least I think so.

The Road Before Me

Greetings. I will be a participant in this year’s National Novel Writing Month and in a fit of over-ambitious creativity I’ve decided that in addition to actually writing my novel, I am going to write this log about writing my novel. This way, people other than my fellow participants can follow along with my progress.

For those of you that don’t know, the basics of NaNoWriMo are as follows: Starting on 1 November participants begin writing a novel. Typical things that writers focus on like plot progression, character development and intriguing settings are not in focus here. They are, in fact, mostly irrelevant. The only measure of success for NaNoWriMo is completion of a 50,000 word manuscript by midnight on 30 November. If you upload and have officially counted your 50,000 word novel by the end of the month, you win! If not, you don’t. There are no prizes, no publication opportunities and no expectations. There is only writing. The focus of the organizers is on getting people in our hyper-busy, über-connected modern civilization to take some time out for simple creativity.

I did NaNoWriMo last year, but I only managed 12,000 or so words. I was attempting a historical fiction set on Sri Lanka between the years 1948 and 1983 that dealt with two families on opposite sides of the political strife that has plagued that island. Basically, I was attempting a James Michner style, multi-generational epic. Since I started without knowing much more then that Sri Lanka is an island plagued by political strife, I was constantly finding myself bogged down in finding the answers to pressing questions like “what kind of animals are on the island?,” “did the British consulate have a large front porch?,” and “are there plantations on the east coast?” Suffice it to say I learned a lot more about Sri Lanka, but didn’t quite finish the novel.

This year I am trying something that (I hope) won’t get me so bogged down. I am going to write I science fiction novel. Not only that, but a science fiction novel based on a film franchise! This is no tabula rasa. I have a wealth of pre-established main characters, archetypal supporting characters, and plenty of loose threads left behind by the canon to draw upon. Plus sci-fi, generally, is highly malleable. Just about anything I want to happen can happen, no matter whether or not there have been any prior hints about it in the canon. I think this year I will totally win!

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead…