The Process of Angst: A Writer's Blog

Sunday, November 04, 2007

National Novel Writing Month 2007 - Day 4

NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. ... As satisfying as it is to reach deep within yourself and pull out an unexpectedly passable work of art, it is equally (if not more) satisfying to be able to dramatize the process at social gatherings.

After sitting out the wonderful insanity that is NaNoWriMo last year, I am insane enough to attempt this again. And since blogging is a perfectly reasonable method of procrastination, I intend to make the occasional update here for your reading pleasure, and for the purpose of preserving my sanity when I start checking my word count every two sentences.

What's this year's novel about?
I'll admit it right off the bat: I'm cheating. The Lonely Light has been in progress in various forms, both active and on hold, for two years now, and it's time to finish it even if my brain explodes in the process. So it's 50,000 new words for Phyllis & co. this November.

What about all the other fairly pointless, yet entertaining, stuff that shows up in this blog?
The Alternate HP7 Project is on hold for November. It's too early in the game to pass off the next chapter to a co-author without a plot-related conference of some kind, and I simply don't have the time at this point.

Other fanfic is non-existent, even in the planning phases. Ideas for House and M*A*S*H fics have been toyed with and recorded, but may not ever make it to a full story form. A full-length parody of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix film is forthcoming, pending the DVD release.

In the meantime, the prologue and chapter 1 of AltHP7 are up for the reading, so if you find yourself a spare minute between scrambling for word count (assuming that you, too, are insane enough to be doing NaNo), go check them out!

Why NaNoWriMo? Have you truly lost your mind?
Yes. Yes I have. NaNoWriMo is quite possibly one of the craziest endeavors known to mankind, and I love it, not only because of the reasons listed on the NaNo site (see above), but because I love the written word. Even when I'm being mercilessly beaten by my own word count, even when it's 2am and I'm trying to crank out another 1,000 words as my eyelids threaten to slam shut at any second, I love words. Words in songs, words in novels, words I write myself...all of it.

There is something truly magical about the ability of what amounts to a bunch of random lines arranged in the right order to transport the imagination to a completely different world, be it a real place or a fantasy landscape. As a reader, I'm enchanted by the experience, and as a writer, I take advantage of it to climb inside character's heads and see what makes them tick. It's a fairly safe way to learn about how I think, or how I would think in someone else's shoes, and the end product is something I can share with other people. There are very few things outside of the creative world that the same thing can be said for.

So yes, I may be insane. But it's a type of insane that I'm perfectly happy with.