Yep I am trying NaNo again this year. I failed last year because I was working a job that often required 12 to 14 hours a day and I never got into any of the local write-ins.
This year I am only working 16 hours a week, and the homesickness has eased enough I can face making new friends so I am anticipating success!I have my novel idea pretty well flushed out, although it will not be (quite) my original Idea.
Turns out there is already a Time Riders series that is about time-travelling kids. When it was pointed out to me in the comments here, I panicked!!! Full scale white-face, spots in the vision panic. I had spent the entire summer planning a series based on the original idea. I had a complete character map, a series arc and the full outline for the first novel all set. OMG! I thought, my entire idea is just a sub-conscious rip off. BUT - it is the best idea I've ever had. I can't tell you how much that sucks! Luckily, I was at Aric and Stacia's and my son and husband talked me off the ledge! I do have my own personal knights in shining armor!
A little triage was needed and a deep examination of EXACTLY what the thrust of my story is. Turns out that if I do away with the time travel everything else about my idea is unique and not derivative of the other book at all. (or at least what I can find out without actually reading it. That is good enough to NaNo and then I will read The Time Riders before editing to be sure I eliminate any concepts that are too closely related.)
The book I am now writing is now called The Arc Riders. The title is based on a quote by MLK: "The arc of the Universe bends towards justice." My main characters are teens and horses. Hence the 'Riders'. In all the descriptions of the other series I have seen no mention of horses so I believe that element will be ok. If anyone has read these books and can confirm the absence of horses, I would appreciate it! Anyway, I don't want to give away too much of the plot so that is enough for now.
One last note - Chip is ULTRA busy all through November so this year we are trying something different for daily posting - VLOGs. I have a new Flip camera (courtesy of Avon) and so I will make a short Vlog to record events and writing adventures each day so that you can all keep pace with my efforts.
As always - Thanks for the support and encouragement!
Cool, good luck. I'm going to be doing NaNo as well - sort of. Since most of my writing projects are game designs, measuring by word-count doesn't work. It's easy to spend solid hours doing good work and not add a single word - like any instruction manual, unlike a novel, a rpg involves a lot of tweaking and balancing and improving.
ReplyDeleteMy plan is to shoot for a set time per day, on average, to spend writing (and not the time I spend writing confirmation curriculum, blog posts, FB udpates, posts to the church website, or sermons!). I still want to find local write-ins if possible, though, since that helps me to focus.
Anyway, good luck! I also have a novel idea that I'm sketching out that may also get some work over NaNo, but I like the time goal of 1-2 hours per day in general.
Totally cool Doug!
ReplyDeleteI'll be cheering for your multitudinous projects through the month then!