By the time you read this, it will be about 20 days until the start of an all new National Novel Writing Month. Unless you read this in the future. Then it will be less time. Or if you’re reading this in the distant future, then it may have passed. If that’s the case, then I’m assuming you’re reading this for my biography, in which case I as your king wish to ensure you get all the information as accurate as possible, so please read closely. I’m sure that I’ve tossed people into the dungeon for less.
October 11th. I’m posting this on October 11th.
In any event, I’m gearing up for National Novel Writing Month.. Nanowrimo for those in the know. Speaking of being in the know, you should feel free to buddy me on the Nanowrimo Website, nanowrimo.org, and you can follow my progress there. Of course, I’ll also be documenting my progress on Bad Shakespeare! All 50,000 words of it. That’s about 1,666 words a day. That’s a lot of words, when you think about it.
Some people have asked: Why are you doing this? I mean, I have a blog I type on, and sometimes getting to 1,000 words three times a week is difficult. (I’m up to 209 with that last sentence... SCORE!)
The answer is: Because it’s scary. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve always wanted to compete in National Novel Writing Month, back BEFORE it was cool to call it Nanowrimo. I’m still not very comfortable calling it that. Seems to neat, especially when we’re trying to get our word counts up!
But this, to me, is terrifying. I have a novel and characters planned out... You’re going to be meeting them very soon... but I don’t write in a way where things are planned out very well. A lot of the time, I just sort of start writing with some characters in mind, and then bam! they end up telling me where they want to go. A lot of the characters I write about are real to me. It’s important for me to respect them. If you don’t respect your characters, then you don’t care about them, then you can’t make your audience care about them. Then you can just have them killed by a stray bullet and despite the fact that the main character returned from the dead that season you’ll never see Tara again and then Willow ends up... whew... Joss, call me, I have some issues to work out with that Tara death scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
There’s also the sheer nakedness of throwing all of this out there for everyone to read, and this is out there for anyone to read. All up here. On the blog. That will be re-named with the title of my book. But it’s going up here without any editing. Of course, when I submit this to be published, I’ll edit it. And i’m going to submit it to be published, mark my words. Because that’s a promise I’ve made to myself.
There’s also the incredible time commitment. I can go ahead and knock one of these posts out of the park in about half an hour when I’m just talking about whatever. But this is something completely different. I have to keep everything in mind, I have to keep plot points in tact, and I have to care for however many characters end up having. Until I decide to kill them off. Brutally. And I’ll do it if they annoy me. If I were writing Mortal Instruments, Simon would have been ripped apart by Vampires a long time ago, and then we’d have a party. All of them would. Sorry, Joss, still call me, I’m obviously having issues I need to work out.
Regardless, It took a lot of courage to put this blog out there. I’m finding it’s taking a brand new level of courage to put an entire novel out there while I write it, an to do it in a month.
I’m going to keep pushing this over the next month, that I will be writing a novel, and I will be doing it on Bad Shakespeare. I’m going to need your help in doing it. I’m going to need your feedback and encouragement.
Let’s do this.
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