NaNo Countdown
Now that I’m a “real lawyer” I have this vague feeling that I should do all sorts of lawyerly things and that I should no longer have time for the trivial pursuits of my pre-lawyer life. You know, “I’m a lawyer. I think about important legal issues. This is my best pose.”
And then I laugh at myself. Ha! And go do all the “trivial pursuits” of my pre-lawyer life.
Chief among those pursuits in November will be the annual adventure of NaNoWriMo. Yes, I know I say every year that I’m going to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, and yes, I know I have only actually lived up to that promise, um, once (I think), but that’s what makes it so much fun. Maybe this year will be a winning year!
I’ve got the plot roughly outlined (still need to do more there), I have a few characters sketched, I have my No Plot No Problem novel-writing kit, but I’m still looking for my maguffin. Any suggestions?
To help you help me, I can tell you that the story is (not surprisingly) going to be another dystopian scenario where people happily pay for the privilege of being under constant surveillance by the corporations running the government. As an added bonus, the method of surveillance also serves to feed people subliminal advertising so that most good citizens are constantly within an a hair’s breadth of bankruptcy in their pursuit of all of the delightful consumer goods they simply must have. So yeah, a happy world it will be.
So what is my maguffin? I’m just not sure. Obviously that’s a problem. I’m working on it.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested in tackling NaNo yourself, I highly recommend you download the “report card” from truckpoetry. If anything will get you to the finish line, this will. (See also: More report card options here.)
Also of interest to past “winners” of NaNo: The Zokutou Clause says you don’t have to start over w/something new on November 1st. Instead, you can try to finish one of the novels you’ve started in the past. Something to keep in mind if you ever get something going that you really want to finish…
Finally, if you’re attempting to write a novel on a Mac, I also recommend checking out Scrivener, a writing program w/lots of features that just might make the task easier. I greatly enjoyed using it last year and, although it’s still in beta (and is therefore currently free), it’s much improved since then. [tags]writing, nanowrimo[/tags]
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October 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I’m a NaNo newbie. Good luck this year!
October 24th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
In my old RPG days, whenever I didn’t have a plot for a game, I’d randomly pick a page from the Weekly World News (I kept a few around for this purpose) and work with whatever I ended up on. It led to some odd, if memorable games. Ah, the old days.
Thanks for the Scrivener tip — I will definitely check it out. My first year doing NaNo — first “serious” fiction since..um..before law school.
October 31st, 2006 at 1:09 pm
You’re a pig in a cage on antibiotics where paranoid androids run around with subterranean homsickness. Dollars and cents, pounds and pence, mark and yen all scream you’re a creep.
2+2=5.
50,000 to go. Clock starts at midnight.
Good writing.
November 1st, 2006 at 8:13 am
Yikes. This pig in a cage needs more antibiotics and more time. More ideas would also be nice. Or maybe fewer ideas and more organization.
Good writing to you, too!