guff

Novel adventure

Welcome to another example of why I should not be allowed near any computer with Internet access. Too late!

Let’s get the informational links out of the way: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is what this is all about. If you have no idea what that is, first read the about page for it. Then perhaps glance over how it’s supposed to work. That’s Ok, I’ll wait.

All done? Good.

Let’s make it clear that I fully know what I’m getting into, as hard as that may be to believe. Honestly, I’ve gone through the damn thing before. If you checked my personal back story, you’d know it will be my third year at this month-long, self-imposed lunacy. I was rather successful at it back in 2002, hitting the 50k word mark in two weeks and a day. Considering I’d never written more than 10,000 words on any one topic or story before that time, I was smugly pleased with myself. Don’t worry, that wore off once I sputtered to a halt trying to finish the work. It still glares at me, demanding a few more chapters so it can finally reach wholeness. Well it can bite me! And last year was such a disaster I won’t go into the details of it (well, not here); but it all failed to slap some sense into me. So I’m up for swing No. 3 of the November writer’s bat.

Third time is the charm, right? Right? Yeah, bite me.

Referring back to attempt #2, one of the goals I had last year was to post the story entire on my weblog. I broke the outline down into 30 sections so I could post a chapter for each day of the month (November has 30 days—I looked it up). It may slip to the side as things really get going, but on this particular facet my pre-plans haven’t changed for this year’s effort. Thirty days, thirty chapters holds a sublime logic I can’t deny. Once I ignore the numerous ad hoc arguments against an endeavor such as this.

So yes, I’ll again be trying my hand at this peculiar community goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days (or less, or less). And we’ll also see what happens when it’s dumped publicly on guff, albeit with accommodations to fit it properly on the blog. For example, my November 1st scraps will have to appear on the 2nd (at the earliest), the 2nd’s composition on the 3rd, and so on. I may back-date chapter posts to restrict them to the November-ish timeframe. Or I could post them all in a single, very long article, then paginate the entire work, setting up one chapter per page of the post. I’m still working out the kinks on how to present it. And then there is the nagging, completely ego-driven anxiety over giving out editorially virgin, potentially stream of consciousness idiocy for the consumption of complete strangers. Usually I have no fear about what I set free online, but there’s going to be little time to polish the work (and comments will be open!). Be it high art or low excrement—and no worries as I have a shovel at the ready—I’ll be powerless to keep my internal editor from constantly screaming at me about all this. However, I do so enjoy watching him curl up in a ball.

So my novel, or NaNoNovel (…), is go for November. And the title? Nonsense Prose.

What else could I call it?