#NaNoForItsuki: Announce it!

The Reading Room NaNoWriMo 2017
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As November 1st approaches (only nine days left!) there’s a task we haven’t covered, an important one.

We’ve had a few weeks to reflect on our plans for NaNo: Mountie Edition. Many of us have pretty firmly decided what we’ll do, and began making outlines, creating characters, and worldbuilding. For those of us who are partaking in NaNo in an unconventional way (crafts, poetry, writing a solo album), we’ve made plans for how we will mark our progress (a topic I’ll cover in another post later this week, I haven’t forgotten you).

But there’s one teeny detail I’ve left out: announcing our novels/projects for NaNoWriMo.

On the official NaNoWriMo website, your profile offers all kinds of neat features. Tracking your word count, overall progress, words-per-day needed to complete your goals, and other cool stats are available to you as you tackle the 30-day challenge. You can earn cool badges as you hit milestones. The website is also how you will verify your word count (a topic we will cover later). But in order to do this, you must first announce your NaNo novel.

The point of announcing your novel is simple: You can’t win what you don’t begin. I will be putting together some things for the Mounties to track progress, comment and encourage one another, and ask for help here on the forum, so if you really don’t want to go through the official process, that’s up to you.

But, if you do, you start by logging in at NaNoWriMo.org From your dashboard, there should be a banner that says “Announce your new novel!” There will be a link at the bottom right of the banner reading “create your novel.”

(Or, you can just click this link and it’ll take you right there.)

On the ‘Create Novel’ page, you select the date of your participation session (November 2017), provide a working title of your novel, and choose the genre if you know it. There is also space to upload cover art for your story, and write a synopsis and short excerpt. None of these are required, and you can always go back and add/change them later, if you’d like.

Keep an eye out later this week for some worksheets for our non-con participants to announce and track their NaNo projects.

Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Dey

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The working title of my NaNo novel is “Unsound.” I’ve written a little synopsis, subject to change. The genre is horror/supernatural.

Synopsis:

After an apocalyptic war ravages both the mundane and supernatural world, every dark and hungry thing living in the shadows is forced out into the open. As the resulting conflict upends the fabric of vampire society, violence spills into the human world. Human deaths attract attention and endanger both species.

Kay, the Secondborn who led the charge against the primordial Hungry Ones on behalf of humanity, and Dev, unlikely Master vampire whose addiction is slowly eating away at his sense, must make difficult choices. Kay wants no part in the vampires’ territory skirmishes, and Dev cannot be trusted. But without intervention, the undead will ensure their own annihilation, and not without heavy cost to the mundane world.

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This year’s NaNo will be book two of Bellwood’s Downside.

Summary:
Sandra and Fyart end up in the Downside again, which is having a bit of a Renaissance under new management.

Some Downsiders, however, are not too pleased with the changes…

For context, here’s the summary for the first one:
Sandra Bellwood has fallen into the Devil’s Millhopper during a trip with her archaeology class.

She meets Mr. B, his secretary Glaedis, a pyro with bird legs named Deek and at least a few other characters in her foul-mouthed quest to get back out, which will naturally end up being far more difficult than Mr. B said it would.

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My NaNo actually isn’t writing at all but I’m using it as an excuse to start posting things on my YouTube channel. My plan is to do 2 videos a week to get myself into a routine that I can hopefully sustain for months to come.
I haven’t planned a lot tbh. I plan almost everything else obsessively but creative things don’t seem to work that way. I expect to be doing covers of songs, random vlogs, and maybe origami tutorials. I don’t want to restrict myself to just one form of expression so hopefully that works.

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I still can’t decide what I’m writing. I’ve narrowed it down to 2 choices.

“The Greys”

Synopsis:

After thirty years of secrecy a billionaire entrepreneur and group of scientists announce to the world they have completed a revolutionary sociological experiment. 84 families from all reaches of the globe agreed to take part in long term genetic modifications to create a new human species. The intent was to make a new breed of human with no history, no stereotypes, and no social baggage.

As word spreads and these new gray skinned humans emerge among us, teams of reporters, researchers and scientists begin trying to understand what is happening. Their efforts become thwarted when they discover a long dormant computer worm, seemingly dedicated to wiping out all records and history of the project and anyone who took part.

A handful of scientists meet in a small Boston hotel conference room to bring together what information they can salvage from journals, first hand interviews and stolen notes from the initial researchers to piece together what went into the making of the greys, and what that might mean for humanity.

I like this first idea, but I don’t think I have a full 50k story to pull from it. I think it’d make a decent Black Mirror or Twilight Zone episode, but I’m concerned I’ll get 2/3 of the way through November with nothing to add to it.

My second idea is a bit more freeform. I have a ton of ideas for what to do in and around Balihouse, but I’m starting to get wary of turning the guildhall into ‘Robertland’. Since I seem to enjoy the idea of a guy and his dog wandering around a crazy, unknown land I figured ‘hey, I could do that for nanowimo’.

(Don’t have a good working title for this one yet)

Synopsis:

Brain Moss found himself waking up on the beaches of what appears to be a temperate island. With no memory of how he got there, or even who he is beyond his name he rises and begins to try to piece things together. During the day he explores this new land, and attempts to satisfy the basic needs of human life, food, water, shelter. During each night, however, he is visited by both dreams and nightmares of places and memories from his past

As he explores and maps both his environment and his own story, he finds them oddly similar in some very interesting ways.

The second one is more of a ‘seat of the pants’ type story. I have a few dozen ideas for past scenes, and places to explore, and I’d hope something interesting would emerge as I knit them together. We can hope right?

Anyway, I’m more interested in the second from a ‘this would be fun’ perspective. But I think the first one is a better planned out story. I’ll decided in the next 8 days I suppose…hopefully :slight_smile:

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I recommend The Greys because I believe you absolutely have more than enough to get 50K out of it. It may not seem like it, but I think once you start outlining and plotting your Acts (if that’s how you choose to do it), you’ll see that you can get a full length novel out of it if you wish.

That said, your second idea has a ton of potential as well. It all depends on what your process is (or, if you’ve never written much before, what you think your process might be). I wrote my first novel “seat of my pants” style. I just sat down with the first sentence and kept going, not really knowing where it was going to take me. It was thrilling and exciting and incredibly surprising because I found myself going places I never would have had I tried to plot out a story beforehand. But there were times when I found myself written into a corner that I couldn’t get out of and had to do some extensive rewriting to fix it (there will be rewriting no matter what you do, but some rewrites are less painful than others).

But you know yourself better than anyone. It all depends on what speaks to you the most. If the ideas speak to you evenly, then how do you feel you’d best be able to reach that 50K mark? Following a detailed map or heading off into the jungle with just a compass and a machete? Like you said, you’ve got 8 days to decide. But I recommend that once you do, stick with it until it’s done. There are few things more detrimental to finishing a project than the siren call of another project waiting in the wings.

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PREACH!

it me

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I’m not even this close to being ready. :sweat: Dang, you all are prepared.

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It’s not so much prepared as I’ve tried writing this one twice already. Almost feel like it’s a sign I should stop while I’m ahead since the end of the first one wasn’t all that open.

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I mean, it is really all up to what you feel. But maybe you should give it another shot. Try some revision and see where it goes?

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Oh, I’m definitely trying again this year, hopefully third time’s the charm.

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I’ve been meaning to write this story for years, may as well actually do it :smiley: Then again, I have so many other options I may just end up changing last minute… But hey, here’s my idea:

“Legend of the Nightingale” (cause I’m boring and the main character’s name literally means “nightingale”)

Synopsis:

A young druid woman living in a small Camelot village, Eos has done her best to live a quiet life. She had been plagued by a persistant voice ever since coming to the kingdom, but one night that voice suddenly leaves her. Despite her relief, she knows it could only mean one thing; the man she has been waiting for her entire life has finally arrived.

Based on the BBC series Merlin, follow Eos’ adventures as her life becomes more and more complicated and her destiny begins to fall into place.

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