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NaNoWriMo 2011
It's that time of year again! Time to grow mustaches. And write novels.
I'll not start writing until next week, but I then have the rest of the month away on a work trip. I'll be sailing back and forth across the Pacific, which means many sea days. This will be my fourth NaNoWriMo attempt. I "won" in 2008, wrote most of a novel in 2009 (and finished it in December), and wrote most of a novel in 2010 (and still didn't finish it).
Story idea choices:
1. Write a novel based on a dream I had a few weeks ago. I haven't thought too much about it, but it has really good start and a really good ending. Hopefully I'll be able to link the two parts together. It's about a thought experiment inside a virtual reality world, and it turns out the thought experiment might not be just thought-based. I'm not sure if this story will reach 50,000 words, but even if not I'll have a completed story.
2. Do a whole new version The Monster Story. This would be the third time I've written this novel from scratch, and with each new writing I find more and more things to add.
3. Write the next 50,000 words in my Arc of Life fantasy novel. This got a lot of good feedback from the people who have read what I've written so far. I'd rather start a new project, but I currently have four or five "works in progress" that aren't progressing very quickly (or at all) due to having a girlfriend and spend creative energy on other projects.
Who else is signing up this year?
theknoxinator I'm looking at you
I'll not start writing until next week, but I then have the rest of the month away on a work trip. I'll be sailing back and forth across the Pacific, which means many sea days. This will be my fourth NaNoWriMo attempt. I "won" in 2008, wrote most of a novel in 2009 (and finished it in December), and wrote most of a novel in 2010 (and still didn't finish it).
Story idea choices:
1. Write a novel based on a dream I had a few weeks ago. I haven't thought too much about it, but it has really good start and a really good ending. Hopefully I'll be able to link the two parts together. It's about a thought experiment inside a virtual reality world, and it turns out the thought experiment might not be just thought-based. I'm not sure if this story will reach 50,000 words, but even if not I'll have a completed story.
2. Do a whole new version The Monster Story. This would be the third time I've written this novel from scratch, and with each new writing I find more and more things to add.
3. Write the next 50,000 words in my Arc of Life fantasy novel. This got a lot of good feedback from the people who have read what I've written so far. I'd rather start a new project, but I currently have four or five "works in progress" that aren't progressing very quickly (or at all) due to having a girlfriend and spend creative energy on other projects.
Who else is signing up this year?
theknoxinator I'm looking at you
Comments
I'll mull over it today and make a decision by tomorrow.
Meanwhile I have another friend who is gung-ho about game design and is trying to turn this month into a "slow jam" between him and some other designers. Now he's trying to pull me into this jam.
I may actually compromise between the sides and write a story with the intention of turning it into a game later on. I'd love to reach 50,000 words with a focus on setting/character appearances, action mechanics, and other factors that could be polymorphed into a game. Of course, it also means I have to ditch my idea for a storyline (which was essentially a memoir of my college life disguised as a fantasy novel - replace coding with magic, internships with shadowy guilds, etc.) ...but that may be for the best.
The only annoying thing is it's day-of and I don't even have an idea yet >_< Sounds like this will be just like all the other years where I shittalked for two days and nothing emerged...
Basically I'm not sure if I should create an account and upload my story or however it works, or just write on my own to say I did it.
Today I plan to begin work on my project, a Berserk-esque dark fantasy novel I've been writing histories/timelines and drawing maps for over the past month or so. My goal is 50,000 words. I have the plot roughly outlined beginning to end, and if I end up short of the goal I have some flashback material to pad it out a bit.
Over the summer I managed 65,000 words of the first book of an unrelated fantasy series before shelving it due to concerns about pacing and a desire to rework the magic system. I plan to drastically rewrite and finish that as well sometime in the near future.
I just got through my first 1,800 words much quicker than expected (Took me about 2 hours). I had an idea - I had an idea of how to turn it into a game - and I started writing.
The story is straight up fantasy taking place in a Norse, Valhalla-like world (I'm still not 100% sure how much I'll follow Norse mythology, making things up is too much fun). In order to train for Ragnarok, the immortals play an arena like sport, where small teams fight to the death in 10v10 wars. The sport itself is sort of like DotA - three forks, RPS like fights, and totems that can be destroyed. The bases can only resurrect 10 times, so the teams must kill their opponents enough, or destroy the life giving totem.
The main character is Tjev, an immortal who died as a child. Those who showed valiance at such a young age become commanders, as the gods trust the children to be more loyal than the soldiers they command. I've also got a bloodthirsty best friend, and Elly, a Valkyrie whose job is to collect dismembered limbs from the battlefield. What will happen? No clue, I don't have the vaguest basis of a story just yet, but I know I'll be daydreaming a lot during work tomorrow!
I'll have more details when I have time to post.
I have written out a lot of notes though at least. I'm hoping to get the ball rolling better once I get past the initial "here's the introduction to my story and whats going on here, hopefully its interesting enough so you keep reading until the good stuff can finally start happening" phase. Bleh.
I'm thinking no. Which is too bad because I had a weird dream a couple nights ago that I think could make for a cool story. It would be one thing if I had enough long days to work on it, but all those days where I'm busy are on the weekend, so that just leaves a couple hours each weeknight to write 3000-4000 words each.
Hopefully next year I'll have more time.
Long story short: the artificial one-month push is probably going to push a lot of amateur game designers to blow past natural points in their design process where they should stop to do playtesting. The result will be advanced prototypes seeing testing for the first time, with a sense to rush them to market because they have the look of a fully developed game.
If NaGa Demon's plan was to have each person come up with an interesting gameplay concept, then spend a month prototyping said gameplay concept, it would work and be awesome, and I'd be totally down for it.
http://askaldsjourney.blogspot.com/
Man writing is hard. ._.;
http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/lukeburrage/novels/get-that-rat-off-my-face
Also, by crossing the international date line I lost a day! 29 days to write the novel. And, of course, I didn't start until about the 10th anyway.