And so it begins..

Today marks the begining of nanowrimo, 30 days of self-imposed deadlines and writing purely for the sake of forcing oneself to write. This year I'm trying something a little different and looking to write a black comdey fantasy epic. It's mostly an exercise in trying to write a different style with a different 'voice'. Two paragraphs in (whilst drinking that first cup of tea in the morning) and it feels ok so far.

The biggest challenge is keeping up the word count. Fifty thousand words in a month means 1666 words per day (easier to round up to 1700 for the maths). From past experience, some days this is easy. On the days when you miss the target, or don't get any writing done at all, the prospect of 3400 words the following day to make up gets to become a very daunting target. Ultimately its as much an exercise in time management and self comittment than anything else.

One would hope that the more you write the better you get (unless you just keep repeating the same mistakes) so nanowrimo is all about the writing (with less focus on the quality). Of course, I don't know many people that write who are perfectionists about the craft to some extent, so there's generally some personal conflict involved in these sorts of undertakings.

My current intetnion is to update things here with a reasonable degree of frequency throughout the task, if only to serve as a mental pushing mechanism for myself. If nothing else a rolling word count update should be posted every few days.

An idea of an idea

With a week to go I think I finally have an idea of what to write for nanowrimo. Unfortunately its not much more than a concept at this point and doesn't really have a plot to go with it. With a Halloween party Saturday night my current plan is to be up for little more than sitting in a near comatose state on Sunday with a notepad and pen to sketch out chracters and plot. If this doesn't work, I'll be 'winging it' for 30 days (a terrifying thought).

If the concept pays off it will be a very different style of writing for me. Most of my normal ideas are dark/modern fantasy as a general rule (none of my sci fi ideas have survived very long so far) and this is a lighter (humorous?) fantasy in a more traditional setting. Of course, even as I write this I'm thinking that maybe there's a way to change it from being too formulaic in its setting and maybe more of a dark comedy than a Pratchett-esque clone.

It will be interesting to approach it as a challenge though, not just in terms of the number of words, but writing something that isn't necessarily in the same vein as other things I've written. Its not exactly as radical a change as writing a post modernistic romance or a western but these things need to be done in little steps (and I can't see myself ever writing the first of those options.. the second, with a liberal dash of aliens, fae and/or time travel, is always a possibility).

Writing of a different kind

Despite the best laid plans, the majority of my recent writing all seems to be work related. The number of process documents I've had to write or re-write recently is enough to dull the brain to mush. Unsurprisingly, having spent time recently focused on my personal writing, work related writing is a lot easier to contend with. Templated documents already have structure, whether its forms, tables or overviews, all you need to do is make the words fit in the section they need to be in and the document is done (of course then getting sign off is an entirely different matter).

It's interesting to note that the recent comic script writing I tried was fairly similar in its exectuion. A complete story broke down to a story in pages, then in panels and finally into specific speech bubbles. Everything in its place. I'm still undecided if this is too restrictive a writing style for me to be happy with, or whether the structure is a welcome relief. Whatever the answer, I'd much prefer to be writing fiction that technical process documents.

Two weeks to nanowrimo and I'm still without a comprehensive idea. I really need to come up with something this weekend, if only so I've got a week or so to work on planning it out. The alternative is writing something so loose it wil threaten to fall off the page.

Plans and growth

Years ago when I started writing I hated planning. For some reason I had a view of the ‘essence’ of writing being corrupted by over planning. I guess I still hold true to this a little. For me writing is a very organic process and letting the story tell itself is a large part of the satisfaction I get out of writing. That said, the obvious risk here is a disjointed story or writing yourself into a corner.

More recently I’ve changed tacts and now I let the story ‘grow’ in my head for a longer while then write down an overview and sketch out a plan. This is normally very high level and the plot is done in point form, with the points being easily swapped around if I change my mind mid-writing. Obviously for a larger piece, like nanowrimo, the plot overview is doubly important given the tight timeframe and the length of the piece. Unfortunately, with a little over three weeks to go before Nov 1st, there’s not too much ‘growing’. Hopefully I’ll get some time to work on that this week.

In other news, the comic writing contest I entered was cancelled at the last minute. Certainly frustrating and disappointing at the same time, probably more so given what I was going through whilst trying to get the script done. So I get to feel disappointed for a day before moving on to the next writing exercise.