Friday Forays in Fiction: Anticipating NaNoWriMo

more animals

Or is that dread I'm feeling?

It's past time to be thinking about the story I will sacrifice to NaNo this year. I say sacrifice because all four of the novels I worked on for NaNo have sat in their files with barely a glance since the end of their month of glory.

So I'm thinking of trying to come up with a 'throwaway' story. One that I'm not too emotionally invested in. One that has no connection to the FOS story world. But I tried that last year and see where it got me? Not one week into my essay into a 'smiple' romance novel, I'd drug in a character from FOS, added a third POV to the maximum two that a simple romance novel can bear and attached themes and a hopeless amount of necesary reaearch to support the roles of the three main characters. And then I proceded to make a collosul mess of the story's files.

So I'm thinking of digging out the sci/fant novel I started some 25 years ago. But I lost all the world building notes I had for it and am not sure I can redo it in the next six weeks and I don't want to be doing more outlining, research and character sketching for the first week or two of NaNo like I did last year.

So I'm thinking of playing with the story concept I've teased about here a few times this summer: a story set in a trailor park. But I wonder if I can keep enough of the reality out of the fiction to forestall stooping to the level of neighborhood gossip. Essentially I wonder if I am too embedded in the story setting myself to be able to create believable characters with living depth such that no one living in this trailer park would think they recognized themselves or any of their neighbors. This one tempts me but as yet there is no story, no characters and no theme, and no plot.

So I'm thinking, since it looks like I'm not going to get Crystal's story done before the end of October and I had sorta promised myself not to start another new story or stray back to another uncompleted one until I had finshed a full rough draft of Crystal's Home Is Where the Horror Is, that I could start working with Brook's story for Nano. Brook is a character in Crystal's story and much or her stoy is set in the same motel. That way I could stay close enough to Crystal's story that slipping back into it after NaNo wouldn't be too hard. In fact I've been so immersed in the motel setting for so long Brook's story might go smoothly enough I could moonlight on Crystal's story whenever my NaNo wordcount was on track. But Brook's story was my first NaNo novel, though there isn't much to it and that not pretty at all seeing as how I started NaNo that first year nearly two weeks into Novemeber.

So I'm thinking of doing Kay's story which is also set 50% in the same motel during the same year as Crystal's story. In fact, Kay's story is so entwined with Brook's story they probably belong in the same novel. But this is part of the FOS storyworld and all of the same things stalling me out on Crystal's story are active issues in both Brook and Kay's stories.

So I'm thinking of passing up the NaNo frenzy this year. But I'm not sure I know what November feels like without NaNo anymore.