{"id":239,"date":"2013-10-27T23:07:32","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T06:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2013-10-27T23:07:32","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T06:07:32","slug":"getting-ready-for-nanowrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All this blogging I&#8217;ve done this month has been an excellent exercise for getting ready for <a href=\"http:\/\/nanowrimo.org\/\">NaNoWriMo<\/a>. \u00a0For those that don&#8217;t know (and that refuse to click the link I just gave you), NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. \u00a0The idea is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. \u00a0That&#8217;s how you &#8220;win.&#8221; \u00a0This is my second year trying it. \u00a0Last year, I was not successful.<\/p>\n<p>The novel I&#8217;ve been working on was started last year. \u00a0I&#8217;ve only just recently hit 30,000 words, and it&#8217;s been a year.<\/p>\n<p>If I&#8217;m so abysmally slow at writing fiction, how will I possibly succeed this year?<\/p>\n<p>For starters, I&#8217;m going to be doing a much simpler project. \u00a0Let&#8217;s look at some of the features of my current novel,\u00a0<em>A Clean Slate.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s a &#8220;troupe&#8221; style fantasy, meaning I need to flesh out and maintain four characters right from the get-go.<\/li>\n<li>It is a somewhat involved social commentary.<\/li>\n<li>The troupe of characters have amnesia, so it&#8217;s challenging coming up with interesting dialog for them. \u00a0They can&#8217;t really talk about their past, or their families, since they don&#8217;t remember any of that.<\/li>\n<li>This troupe of characters are secretly villains.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In short, I gave myself some stipulations right from the start which makes it challenging to actually get the words on the page. \u00a0I think I&#8217;ve done a good job so far, but it&#8217;s a somewhat complicated story to tell, and I sort of have to take it slow just to keep it all straight and coherent.<\/p>\n<p>This new project doesn&#8217;t have those stipulations. \u00a0In fact, I&#8217;m doing it in first person.<\/p>\n<p>My main character is one that I used in a roleplaying game a few years ago. \u00a0He&#8217;s a fun character. \u00a0He&#8217;s a bit of a hedonist with a southern drawl. \u00a0He lives in the present, but he has a special ability that lets him see the past. \u00a0I love this guy&#8217;s voice, and I love his flippant attitude.<\/p>\n<p>In short, torturing this character should be a lot of fun. \u00a0My goal is to make the story as fun as a Harry Dresden book.<\/p>\n<p>You could say that this whole month of October has been research for my project in November. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been listening to the Dresden Files books (and loving them), and I&#8217;ve been writing this blog, which is first person. \u00a0It&#8217;s a different voice, but it&#8217;s still valid practice. \u00a0And, I&#8217;ve been writing a blog post every day, which is the same kind of dedication I&#8217;ll need to getting 50,000 words completed in a novel.<\/p>\n<p>I can do it this year. \u00a0I can do it, and I&#8217;m going to have fun doing it.<\/p>\n<p>Then in December, I can go back to finishing\u00a0<em>A Clean Slate<\/em>. \u00a0And maybe in January or February, while trying to get\u00a0<em>A Clean Slate<\/em> out, I can polish up my still unnamed work, and get it ready to sell a little while longer.<em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have a really good feeling about this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All this blogging I&#8217;ve done this month has been an excellent exercise for getting ready for NaNoWriMo. \u00a0For those that don&#8217;t know (and that refuse to click the link I just gave you), NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. \u00a0The idea is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. \u00a0That&#8217;s how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}