One of the things that has always bothered me with my writing is coming up with names. Every character needs one and mine always end up in one of two categories. Either their name is unique and awesome, or it is horrible plain and forgettable. I have spent many any hour agonizing over names and often end up reusing the same ones over and over.
However, thanks to an idea from Corvus Elrod, I started keeping a list of names from spam emails and comments on this blog. I’ve already got well over two hundred names and I’ve only been doing it for about a week. The names range from the banal to the exotic and every level in between. The idea was inspired, so to Corvus, sir, I tip my hat. I may never have to worry about character naming again.
I didn’t win. I ran into a few obstacles this year. I fell into the switching stories trap. I also got sick… nasty stuff. And I also suffered from a general unemployment malaise. You know, you would think that with all this free time I’d get plenty of writing done. But it turns out then when I’m unemployed I spend all my time looking for a new job and worrying I won’t be able to pay my bills.
Anyway… I did manage to get further than I ever have before. I got just over ten thousand words on one project and probably twenty thousand across all of them. I’ve never cleared ten thousand before. So, even though I didn’t win, I managed a milestone.
But now it is December, and the NaNoWriMo is done. However, I don’t think I’ll stop writing this time. I’m going to try to block out at least an hour every day for working on something, and I’ll even try to make it the same something as often as possible.
That is the title of my NaNoWriMo project this year. Originally I was going to work on something called Necromancer, but I stalled out on it really early on and after a few days being totally stuck I decided to bail on it in favor of something that will be far easier to write.
So, what is The Awesomest Story Ever Told? It is the tale of a clan of ninjas who protect the world from threats of the undead who encounter a spaceship from the future crewed by two astronauts, a monkey and a robot who have traveled back in time to prevent a zombie apocalypse. Right away they discover that the apocalypse of the future was the product of a group of mad scientists who unleashed the zombie hordes in their bid to overthrow all the governments of the world. As the scientists activate their own time machine and slip away, our heroes reconfigure the spaceship from the future to follow them. It is a journey through history fighting for the future and encountering everything awesome that has ever existed.
As you can see, my basic story already contains much awesome. Ninjas, zombies, astronauts, a monkey, a robot, mad scientists, spaceships and time travel. There are already plot points to include dinosaurs, cavement, pirates, wild west gunfighters, sharks, vampires, werewolves, a medieval castle and knights, but this story needs to include all of the awesome. All of it.
So, I implore you, every reader, suggest something (or many things) that is awesome. Feel free to explain why it is awesome, or don’t. Just suggest awesome and I will try to work it in to the story, and I’ll give credit to the first person to suggest an item of awesome should this work ever see publication of any form.
Today is November… and that means it is National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, a mad dash to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Two years ago was the first time I’d heard of the WriMo. I planned to participate, and I even wrote a couple of days, but it was fairly pathetic. Last year I was hyped… then I got sick and was down for the count for nearly two weeks (missed a fair bit of work too).
This year, I am ready. I got my idea all in line over the past month and did a little outlining and plotting, just to make sure the idea wasn’t going to stall on me. Today I wrote… 1,430 words. Best NaNoWriMo start I have ever had.
I’m looking forward to see how the rest of the month turns out…
As long as I remember to update it, you’ll be able to keep track of my progress over in the sidebar, or on the official NaNoWriMo site on my profile.
I love October. It contains my two favorite holidays: my birthday and Halloween. However, in the last couple of years, passing through October has also held a certain growing level of dread… November is coming, the NaNoWriMo is almost here.
Once again I’ll be attempting to participate in this annual event. The worst thing that could possibly happen to me within the next month is for me to not find a new job and have to start juggling finances until I do. The best thing that could possibly happen for the WriMo is for me to not find a new job and have the month to split between looking for work and writing.
We’ll just have to wait and see how this one goes…
You might have noticed that during the entire month of November I did not post, not once, about the NaNoWriMo. Let me tell you why…
I got sick.
Yeah, its a lame excuse, but the wife and I both caught the creeping crud somehow and it put us both down for the count. To be honest, we should have gone to the doctor as bad off as we were, but without insurance those office visits add up. Even if we’d had insurance, what I can afford to buy on my own ends up having such a high deductible and covers so little, its really like not having insurance. Instead we stayed at home and doped up on the OTC medications.
Ultimately, NyQuil with the alcohol in it did the trick. But after nearly two weeks of headaches and congestion, coughing and aching, I just wasn’t in the mood to write.
I tried, a few false starts, but since I started the month sick I never settled on an idea, a place or character or situation, and I wound up doing what I always do, write half-assed outlines. I’ve got about six more of them now, all with plot twists or cool characters and not a single one even remotely close to being a full fledged story. All in all, I probably wrote 20,000 words in November, but spread out over a half dozen stories… well, it just sucks.
Next year, I’ll try not to get sick. In the meantime though, I’ve got a few other things going to help get the juices flowing, and with the Writer’s Guild still striking, I soon won’t have much TV to distract me.
Of course, there is always Rock Band…
Last year’s attempt to participate in the NaNoWriMo did not go so well. I’m hoping this year goes better. I don’t have any more unmarried brothers, I can’t afford any vacations, the open projects at work don’t look like they are going to surge, so this may just be my year.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to do, which story I want to write, and I’m still floundering, unfocused. So, here provided is a list of the things I am thinking about doing, cast your vote.
- The Jumpgate War: In the future we have finally discovered how to travel between distant star systems, in two pieces, the jump ship and the jump gate. The ships are large hulking vessels, expensive and requiring monstrous amounts of power to jump the ship across space. There are very few of them. Once they find a suitable planet, the crew sets down and installs a jump gate and dials home, with a source at both ends the gates are far easier to use. The nations of Earth (and its nearby planets) have their own goals in the universe, and it turns out that we are not alone.
- Superhero Harry Potter: Those three words are the easiest way to describe my idea without spending pages to lay it out. A girl, the daughter of superheroes, comes into her own abilities, has to deal with High School and maintain her secret identity.
- “A Willful Destruction of Life”: This is a very odd idea, because it is no idea at all, it is just a title… the thought here is “Come up with an interesting title, then create a story that fits it.”
- American Apocalypse: A story about the US after terrorists detonate a nuclear device in Washington D.C. on inauguration day, essentially wiping out the political side of the federal government.
- Land of the Fairer Sun: A fantasy tale about the return of incarnations of forgotten gods, the rise of a brand new religion of a single god and the kingdom caught inbetween.
I’m also trying to put together a writing group this year to meet on a semi-regular basis, probably at my house, so we can cheer each other on and maybe keep each other from quitting.
15 days until go time…
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