Its NaNoWriMo time!

One hour to go…..got your first line?

It’s the most wonderful time of year – November and NaNoWriMo

Yay!  November is almost here.

Unlike last year at this time, when I wasn’t sure if I was going to do NaNoWriMo, ultimately deciding to on Halloween with no plot or character until 11:30 that night.  And I ended up writing 125k.  How about that.

I started NaNo three years ago, with a day long attempt.  I had a great idea that I completely thought out.  Then I started to write it…and got bored because I knew how it ended.  The next year I started 41 sunflowers, and ended in the 70k range.  I planned a week before hand, but I didn’t do enough character development.  It’s halfway done, sitting on my desktop, waiting to be finished.  One day I will.  Then last year’s masterpiece of fluff.  I had a blast writing it, and it’s no where near something publishable, but I had a *blast* and I *loved* writing it.   And that’s what NaNoWriMo is about to me – having fun, writing something you love (but hate sometimes), proving to yourself you can do it, and commiserating with a big group of people online.

Here’s my idea this year – Its a covenant group made up of 7 members.  There’s a revolving first person POV, one chapter for each character, through the course of 7 biweekly covenant groups in Oct-Dec.  Each character has to learn a lesson, and the moral of each chapter is one of the 7 principles.  (I’m big on structure like that.)  I first came up with the lessons-to-be-learned (and a couple of those principles were hard, like #4) and then I brainstormed how they build a web of interactions “off character” (the other characters are doing it when its not that character’s turn for the POV) so its more believable.  Now I’ve finally started to brainstorm the characters, trying to provide a little more consistency and depth to them that are usually lacking in my nanoattempts.  I’m allowing myself a page a character.

I’m really excited…hopefully not getting too excited too early.  And hopefully I won’t get too into it this week….I’m in charge of a major event at church next Sunday.  After which I will drop off the face of the earth for a month.  YAY!

So anyone else out there nanowrimo’ing?

Forty-One Sunflowers – The Fourteenth Sunflower

I had to put this up – This is another “Sunflower” / chapter from 41 sunflowers.  This could *almost* be a short story on its own right actually.  This is probably my favorite of everything I’ve written…ever.  Excuse the typos.

Forty-One Sunflowers – Sunflower #1

This was my first solid attempt at NaNoWriMo, and it’s been on my mind a lot as of late.  I’m going to pick it back up.  I remember getting a lot of positive feedback from it.  Here’s the first “Sunflower” aka chapter.   Whatddya’ll think?

NaNoWriMo is over!

I ended up with 125k words.  I did not actually reach my goal of 150k, and the novel is, alas, not finished.  It’ll be done in about 25k words.  Thanksgiving just sucked the life out of me – the long, extended trip with the family which was rather hellish and then getting a cold….put my out of comission this week.

But thats ok.  I can’t belive I freaking wrote 125,000 words this month.  Wowza.

So whats next?  Gotta finish it, then back to real life.  I did, actually, have some thoughts of new story ideas and I found a little motivation to work on my prior unfinished masterpiece 41 sunflowers.  So I gotta use that.  Gotta keep blogging, and starting Dec. 1st I am back on program for Weight Watchers.

Hopefully this’ll be the last time I have to restart weight watchers.

And to everyone Unitarianish reading this, head over to the Blog Carnival and write about this months topic – UU in the Workplace.  I’ll certainly have my experiences up sooner than later.

Wahoo! 100k and an excerpt.

For the two of you interested how my NaNoWriMo is going, I just hit 100k about twenty minutes ago, to much jubilation. I divided up my novel into three parts, each 50k long and each one loosely based off the moral lesson of each of the first three principles. I started off today with absolutely no idea how I was going to get to that with this section, but my main character, Owen, pulled it through! Below the jump is an excerpt, the last bits of the 2nd section I just wrote. So, some explanations -

a) Greg is Owen’s best friend. Conservative. Goes to a mega church, the scene for this selection.

b) Pastor Sam is Greg’s youth pastor, and just came out to Owen, and seems like the unhappiest man alive, so its got Owen thinking about being in the closet and uhnappy/.

c) the part about blogging with my real name? Not happening here. Just in my story, so don’t get your hopes up.

d) this is unedited, so it sucks. Grammar mistakes abound, but I don’t care. So you shouldn’t either.

The excerpt follows!  Let me know what you think.  I say that knowing anything too harsh will completley destroy me……………………………………………………………….

NaNoWriMo pretty graphs

Yup, running late for work. Dont much care though.

Those are for my personal goal of 150k, which is utterly insane, since the official goal for nanowrimo is 50k. But thats about where I expect my novel to be finishing. I think I’ll post an excerpt sometime soon.

Still quiet.

Its still a quiet time here at Spirituality and Sunflowers, which can completely be blamed on NaNoWriMo.  Update – I hit 50k, so technially I won, but I’m aiming for 150k and a finished book.  Unlike my 70k, half done, attempt last year.  My story started wavering from Spiritual Fiction to, well, gay eortica, but my main character promptly brought it back to spiritual fiction in the past 2000 words or so.  I’m proud of the little guy.

But its starting to kick some serious ass.  And I’m starting to get proud of the thing.  Here’s the first paragraph as a teaser.  This really isn’t the theme, but, eh, its a hook. -

Part 1 – InherentDay 0 – Getting caught up to speed 

So I know this sounds cliché, but I always knew I was different growing up.  It seems like every bad personal story starts off with someone knowing they were different from everyone else.  Well, I can’t claim to know if this is a unique circumstance or if there are others out there with this, but, well I know it sounds ridiculous, but trust me it’s the God honest truth. 

I was reincarnated.

I know!  I didn’t even believe in reincarnation in, well, what was my past life, although I certainly believe it now.   

Nanowrimo Update –

So I threw my hat into the ring for NaNoWriMo – I started brainstorming yesterday and finally at 11:50, 10 minutes before kickoff, I had an idea on what to do.  I’ve finally got a character down, both this and his past life, and I just wish I had a plot.  I’m making it Unitarian Fiction – there’s enoough Chrstian fcition out ther I figure we could use some Unitarian Fiction too.  The overall moral is going to be the first principle – if I can just figure out what vechicle it plans on using I’d be in much better shape.

The goal is 1667 words per day to keep on the 50k by the end of the month track.  I’ve written 7843 since 12:00:01 on 11/1/06 – just over 12 hours ago.  Pretty damn good so far.

NaNoWriMo?

Anyone else out there in UU Blog Land going to do NaNoWriMo this year?  I did it last year and I decided why the hell not, lets try it again …and I decided 14 hours before it starts and have no ideas!  Fun!

Last year I wrote around 80k words on my 41 Sunflowers book, and its only like half done.  But I want to do something else this year.  I just wish I knew what.

So if anyone else is doing NaNoWriMo, gimme a hollar!  We can make it into a little competition.

And for you who don’t know what I’m talking about, hit up www.nanowrimo.org