NaNoWriMo is about to infest this site as it has infested my life. The next few weeks will be spent arranging my life to write non-stop for a month, as the last few have been.
I notice in the writer’s forums that most of my fellow participants are working feverishly on plot synopsis, character analysis, outlines, scene progressions, and so forth. I haven’t done any of those things. My preparations have been domestic: making sure my house is clean and the freezer is full. Given what the experienced participants are doing to prepare, I’m not sure this was a good idea. I have a vague idea of what I’m going to write about, some brief character notes, and that’s about it.
I have written a few 1,700 word 24 hour bursts of fiction for practice. My usual pace is about 150 words an hour, which gets me there in just over eleven hours, but I rarely write at that length and never for that stretch of time. Tonight’s burst is a story about hashing on the Moon; the next is entitled “Plashy Tramp and The Genius of Famine,” but I have no idea what it’s about yet. (I’ve also been annotating “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and writing an accompanying lesson plan for my home-schooler. This is what reworking someone else’s fiction will get you – a great title and no plot).
If you’re interested in reading the annotated version of “Sleepy Hollow” (three cheers for the public domain) or teaching the lesson plan, you can find them both here.
