It's NaNoWriMo time!Well almost. What we are currently experiencing is the month of Plotters Galore, aka the non-pantser writers month of hell.
October is where it really all starts for us. This is where you start thinking about which story you'll want to take up and submit to merciless word torture, which soundtracks fit your story, which word processing program gives you the least trouble and which reference websites make you procrastinate the least. (Or if you do none of the above, at least this is the month when we as writers start hearing conversation about NaNoWriMo start picking up again.)
For the dedicated plotter (the Monkey included) we have the tiring task ahead of literally writing a novel twice. We will plot it the whole way through, then come November will put those scene sketches into actual words. Dialogue, narrative...that kind of stuff. We'll begin obsessively tapping the space bar and making hyphenated words into unhyphenated ones.
But October is our preparation month. Polish your pens, build your food reserves, buy lots of coffee from reduction sales. We are preparing for war.
So here comes the all important question –and if you have more than one potential choice for this in mind, it's a toughy– what story are you going to write?
'What story am I going to write?!' Since the end of the 2009 NaNo this question has haunted me like a bad dream. I have a lot of choices to choose from. So it's like that question all the grown-ups keep asking you while you're at school (which you keep hating as you can't answer it), 'what are you going to be when you grow older?'
There's no point in answering that question when it's asked, because by the time it matters, you'll most likely have changed your mind dozens of times by then. And yet I just can't help but start planning so far ahead. Even though I will change my mind right at the last second anyway. And I know it.
So here goes. I had 3 choices of stories for this year. I had decided right after last NaNoWriMo that this year I would write Arkanos Book Two. But then in July, I thought up an idea for a story about a city of angels and mermaids. Then I had another old story, a dark one I had intended for last year (till I changed my mind), that I had some new ideas for and looked promising. I was leaning toward the angels and mermaids.
Until two nights ago I had a dream. A really good one. About witches and people flying around. And teenage mutant ninja turtles. And I changed my mind. Again.
My story this year will be 'Elda'. I will add a synopsis onto the Novel Info page as soon as my plotting is far enough to actually have a synopsis. ^__^;;; But I can say this much even now that it is based around a powerful and evil sorceress (called Elda) who once ruled the world for a hundred years. Then all of a sudden she just vanished. But now she threatens to return to the world, and it's up to the hero to stop that from happening.
There are no teenage mutant ninja turtles.
