Na-No-Wri-Mo, here I come!
Right back where The Gray God started from!
At the gym today, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo 2023, the current iteration of the 50,000 words-in-a-month writing challenge. Yes, I am writing this on October 31st, 2023, the day before the challenge begins. As with my previous NaNoWriMo, an important part of my motivation here is to hold my feet to the fire writing-wise. Also, per my previous NaNoWriMo, I’m charging into this without a solid outline. Hey, I’m happy with the results of the last run, so I’m optimistic.
The same, only different
This time around, I’ll be working on Untitled Science Fiction Project. In previous blog posts, I discussed the lengthy worldbuilding phase of this project. Since then, I’ve been working* on character backgrounds in the form of mini-autobiographies, which flesh out the details of their pasts and refine their distinctive voices.
I’ll be working in Scrivener again. It’s a great writing tool. Its ability to break a manuscript into independent scenes makes jumping around the plotline easy. This is especially boon-i-licious when you have scene ideas scattered from beginning to end. You go where the muse takes you to get your precious word count goal for a given day. NaNoWriMo doesn’t require you to produce a coherent product, just 50,000 words of product.
I’ll be sticking to my plan of developing the story as a screenplay. This worked, albeit unintentionally, for my first novel, Raether’s Enzyme. The screenplay format is brisk, lean, and hyper-focused on key story details: character, setting, and plot. A screenplay can serve as a super outline for a novel. You have the essentials, which can then be developed into prose.
Another key lesson from the previous NaNoWriMo is: Always cheat, always win. The best you can hope for in NaNoWriMo is first draft quality. Unless you’re Stephen King, who routinely writes at 2000 words/day. By cheating, I mean counting material that may not make it into the final product. Say, for example, the as-yet-unwritten mini-autobiographies. Those are pure backstories, but I’ll count them. Bits and pieces of them may get woven into the ‘real’ story.
Wish me luck
Please. To the extent I succeed, I’ll have built momentum for Untitled Science Fiction Project. Yay! Getting it to a good state before production and publicity work for The Gray God kicks into gear is the goal. If you have a NaNoWriMo account, you can follow my progress on my NaNoWriMo here. I’ll be posting updates on Facebook and X as the month progresses.
*Of late, my level of work output brings to mind this scene from Office Space.
“Well, I Wouldn’t Say I’ve Been MISSING It, Bob.”