NaNoWriMo Challenge Met
I didn’t think I’d ever make a proper start on this story. It’s been kicking around in my head for years, and aside from dabbling in the idea for my Honours project (a work of interactive fiction, coded in PHP/MySQL/jQuery, combining the stats of an RPG and the choose-your-own-adventure format – damned awesome stuff, albeit too labour intensive for a single writer), I haven’t had the time to invest in any real effort. I mentioned in an early entry how Novembers tend to be busy-as-Hell months, and how I keep really wanting to participate in NaNoWriMo, but generally get swallowed by everything else. I’d like to see an Antipodean NaNoWriMo (and Halloween, while I’m putting in requests with the powers-that-be – our Samhain is April/May, a much better time of year for costumes! And Christmas in June would make traditional wintry imagery less ridiculous, and I’d feel less sorry for the fat guy in red flannel in the middle of Summer). A NaNoWriMo in May would be good. May is a slow month.
Halfway there!
I’ve made it halfway through my NaNoWriMo challenge for this year, actually on time and on target for a change. This is novel – pun intended – but I don’t want to jinx myself, because there’s still half a month to fall behind and fail. Which I’ve done in several Novembers of the past. Before I started I had ideas about sharing it, thinking it might motivate me to write more and better if someone was reading along, but I couldn’t bring myself to trust anyone with it, and as I got started… well, I haven’t written anything much worth sharing! I’m juggling a lot of different character perspectives, and not sticking with any of them for any great length of time, so the story itself hasn’t actually progressed very far. I haven’t even started all the characters waiting to be written, so I’m definitely not going to be short of things to write. But I’m already running into silly narrative conflicts and having to retcon or earmark for fixing later down the line.
NaNoWriMo
Every year I’m filled with an urge to participate in NaNoWriMo, yet I’ve only managed to do so a few times, and completed it fewer times than that. Something about November being a stupid-busy month for me makes it damned hard to sit down and write creatively. November is my ‘Murphy’ Month. If shit is going to happen at all through the year, it’s probably going to happen in November. Though a few other months are starting to compete for the title. Still, it’s half way through October, and I’m getting that urge again! So much so that, when I logged on to the site and updated my details, I even went so far as to throw together a rough cover image to inspire myself!
