Thursday, November 5, 2009

NaNoWriMo: plotting


Let’s face it: I’m going to lose this year’s NaNoWriMo, big time. I haven’t even been abel to start, focused as I was writing a short story. Last night I finally typed the three magical characters (###) that indicate the end of the end in the standard manuscript format. More work is required, but it will be of the editing kind, which I will do later at night when all those creative energies are about to go to sleep.

But at this point we are 5 days into November, and I still have a big round ZERO word count. What is worse, I haven’t thought about a plot yet. Sure, we know what they say “No Plot No Problem.” But I want this month of November to count for something: even if I “lose” I want the stream of words to be produced to go towards a self-contained, consistent story which I will continue adding on, polish and restructure in the future.

What have now is several years of notes. I have thought in passing about this novel for a long time. Once in a while I would type up some thoughts, toss it in some folder, and forget about it. I almost thought I was suffering from a classic case of Worldbuilder's Disease, but what I lacked was the chance to put all of this together. Now, I have a (slightly less than a) month to do just that, to unravel the garbled yarn in my head, put some order into chaos, and hope that something worth reading will take place in the process.

And if you stay tuned I might even tell you how this is going to happen...

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