First 366 words of Nanowrimo project

Samuel woke up, “What was the point?” he wondered. “No job to go to, no jobs to find, and him and his girlfriend Ana were living with his mom again. Seriously, what is the point of even getting up, this sucked!” In frustration Sam, threw a pillow, it seemed to move in slow motion as his eyes adjusted to the light, there was a loud clang as it nailed one of the swords hanging on the wall above the various brickabrack on cabinets and shelves.

Ana woke up beside him exclaiming “What the…”. “Sam explained, “oh, it’s nothing I just tripped when I was trying to get up.” “How do you trip a pillow into the wall?’

“Oh, you saw that huh?” , Sam smiled.

“Yeah, I saw that”.

The room filled with a sound of metal scraping on plaster, Ana and Sam looked in horror as the end of the sword cut loose from the wall. It swung through the book shelves and cabinets carving a path of carnage and destruction through the various action figures, Fantasy art, and role playing books. The sword which was originally designed to be wielded by a Samurai to carve through legions of Mongol hordes was now carving through legions of Wookies from Star Wars, Orcs from World of Warcraft, and splitting a spiderman figure right in two. At the end of its path the sword released from the wall. The sword sailed through air, towards Ana’s collection of stuffed animals, a piercing scream filled the room as the sword found its destination, impaled through the head of a stuffed Koala Ana had owned since she was 3.

“Shit”, Sam exclaimed.

Ana’s screaming didn’t cease as she began to beat on Sam with pillows, sheets, blankets, other stuffed animals, and her fists. “What the hell is wrong with you!”, she screamed at him.

“It was an accident”, Sam yelled as he retreated from the room, tripping over laundry, the remains of the koala and casualties from the Wookie massacre.

“Thank God Mom isn’t home”, Sam thought. “I have been getting enough grief from her already about finding work and working on around the house, I can’t use any more.”

Nanowrimo Plan

I have started a Nanowrimo journal and have built an outline which includes the first chapter of the book. The novel is well on its way to completion and I haven't even started writing yet! Awesome.

Things I have found that are really working:

• Work on the outline or journal about the book a little bit every day
• Talk to someone about the story every day
• Base the characters and personalities on people I know - this really helps with preparation. The characters are still mine but I can base them on aspects of personalities I really understand rather then having to create them myself.
  

How will this help me with Ballard?
A friend asked me if taking Nanowrimo will de-rail me from Ballard. That danger is real, I have enjoyed the break from Ballard but I fully plan on finishing it so I need to plan for a return once Nanowrimo is over. What will help me with Ballard is the writing practice. I was writing Ballard in a completely non-linear way that was making the story confusing even to me, by practicing some outlining structure I can order some of that mess and build some stories behind it. Plus since my friend challenged me to complete it I have to return to it. :) Thank you Augusto.

Planning new story for Nanowrimo

I am putting the breaks on Ballard until 12/1 but I am working on a new story for National Write a Novel month. Why? I care a lot about Ballard and I am not giving up but the purpose of Nanorwrimo is to finish a novel in November; while I could finish Ballard quickly but that wasn't the original purpose of writing it, I wanted something that I would be writing over the period of a few years in a nonlinear format, this just won't work for Nanowrimo.

I am working on a simple fantasy novel involving a character who is drawn into another world after going to sleep. You can read more about it on my nanowrimo page here.

Nanowrimo

This last weekend I spent some time at a men's retreat and had some time to think. My committment to National Write a Novel month will consist of two pages a day on a new story about being lost in a fantasy world. This will not be connected to Ballard but will be a simple story based on some ideas I have been playing with for a while now on dreams and interdimensional travel involving the imagination.

The big question the story will answer is "What if the boundries between imagination and reality came upart unlocking another world?"

National Novel Writing Month

I have made the committment to write a novel in November. 50,000 words! This is for National Novel Writing month.

I am pretty intimidated by this committment but it is only 2 pages a day and I have plenty of time to prepare. I will do my best.

Affirmation: Let it write itself

Let your story write itself, sit down in front of the typewriter, notepad, or computer, close your eyes, take a deep breath and let it out as words. Your story is written on your very bones and you can write it by breathing out those words.

The Void and the Darkness

Yesterday after analysing my resistance to writing I dialed back my committment and added Ballard to my daily list to appear every two days. My Ballard writing will be a vague committment; the item on the list is just titled Ballard with no explanation.
When reviewing the list this morning around 5:00, I came upon Ballard, hesitated for a moment, and opened a word document and started typing. Here is what the story revealed today:

I often wondered what was down there. I had been to the bridge uncountable times throughout my youth and looked down into the crevice between the two points of Macan Mount and thought to myself, “What lurks in darkness like that? What lurks in places where mist mingled with darkness creates a feeling of dread that that would cause one to hesitate, to linger on the wood and metal lattice known as Acrocia cross.

I thought about the void, the void in my mind seemed to grow bigger every day and I became aware of it more and more often. Today, while crossing, the horses grew nervous as they often did, which caused the carriage to slow. I lifted my head from my doze and peered out the window into the dark expanse and thought about the void. While the depths of the crevice were black and filled with smoky mist the void was bright and barren, while no light source existed there, it was still bright, bright as light. And the biggest difference, was the longing; while the dread pushes me farther and farther away from the darkness, the light of the void calls to me, pulling me in to the comfort; the comfort of…nothing.