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Nano Again!


 

So this year my wife talked me into doing NANOWRIMO again. That is the National Novel Writing Month. It is an activity people sign up for where they try to write a novel in the 30 days of November. Their definition of a novel is 50,000 words. No matter what you have written, if you made it to 50,000 words you are a “winner,” although you don’t actually win anything except for a sense of accomplishment and a certificate. I have done it a number of times in the past and have managed to always complete the 50.000 words. In fact, my novel Star Liner started out as a Nano novel. Some of my Nano novels have been pretty good, others, not worth looking at again.

But I didn’t really have any ideas going into this year, so I was not enthused about doing it. But she wanted to do it, so I said okay. On the last couple of days of October I would occasionally ponder what I was going to write. I have a short story that some have said seems like the first chapter of a novel. So, I thought. I could flesh that out. I could start where the story left off, or perhaps just before the ending and expand it into . . .  into what? That’s the problem. Every scenario I came up with ran out of steam before going anywhere. Then I would forget about it and get busy with work or whatever. Meanwhile the clock was ticking.

November 1st came and still I had nothing. Okay, looks like it is going to be a “wing it” novel. In technical terms used by Nano veterans, I was being a “pantster” that is, someone who flies by the seat of their pants, as opposed to a “planner” someone who has an outline and maybe a frickin' clue what they are doing. Before I left for work on Monday, I started a document for my NANOWRIMO project. I put one word on the document. That word was “Out!” hoping that would spur me onward later in the day when I could actually have time to write. See, I do work full time. Oh, and this year the powers that be decided to give me jury duty in November. Actually, the jury duty has so far been a good thing. I was called in one day for jury duty. All I did on that occasion was sit in the hall for two and a half hours and wait to see if I was selected (I wasn’t). But for two and a half hours I sat there with a pad of paper and worked on writing. I didn’t feel comfortable taking my clunky old laptop to jury duty so. A pad of paper it was. I got a lot of writing done that day, but I did have to transcribe it into the computer when I got home that night. I did fall behind on my word count the first three days, but I have been gradually gaining ground the last couple.

So, what am I writing, you ask with bated breath? It is called “The Methane Sea” A group of scientists are exploring a planet for signs of life. This planet is cold enough that it has liquid methane lakes and solid methane ice. It is going okay so far. Perhaps for next week’s blog you will get an extract. Mmm . . . we’ll see how it goes.

Star Liner

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