NaNoWriMo Prep... Already?

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So, usually I hold off on planning for NaNoWriMo until a lot closer to November, but for some reason, this year, I'm planning a lot harder. I think its because I really want to finish a project this year. Last time I actually wrote 50,000 words for a NaNoWriMo project was during Camp NaNo 2017, for Ichor and Ambrosia. I got to 50,057, the story wasn't anywhere near finished (probably not anywhere near halfway finished...) and just quit writing... probably because, beyond 2/3rds of the story, I had no clue what it was going to be about or what anything was. So I reworked the story into Born a Slave for NaNo 2018... but I only got to about 11K before I just... quit writing. Not because I didn't know what was happening, but because I was working through a relatively boring part of the story, so I lost steam, felt it was bad, and just lost any and all motivation and started to hate myself lol.

Even before Camp 2017, the last time I'd won NaNo before that was in 2014... my sophomore year of HS, for the original Smoke Season story (which I've been planning to rewrite for years now. Ugh!).

But I really want to get to 50K this year. But not only do I want tog get to 50K, I want to finish an entire novel after that 50K, I want to edit that novel, I want to go on submission to agents and finally query a serious project. (Anyone remember Psithurisma? We actually queried that... no surprise it didn't get any response).

Anyway, I'm not necessarily stressed about planning, but I am trying o carefully choose the project I think is worth my time. I was thinking about trying again with Born a Slave, as I have a whole outline and 11K words already written (my outline estimates 65K total, so it would still fit in NaNo's 50K challenge). Into the Lion's Den is a newer project I've outlined a little on but haven't done too much with. It's basically Dracula with "kings court" political intrigue and gay men. I like the premise a lot, I just don't know if I'm capable of executing it well enough (but that's how I feel about the majority of my projects). I was also thinking of finally rewriting Smoke Season, as it will be super easy to get to 50K with the three different POV characters it has.

I guess I have a lot of work to do to figure out what I want to write, lol. My concern with Smoke Season isn't necessarily the execution of the premise itself (as I've already written it?) but the... themes? Concept? Worldbuilding? It's based heavily on Native American & primitive tribal culture in general, and I don't want to offend anyone with potential stereotypes or anything, as in the end it is a fantasy story.

Any of you guys doing nano this year? Let me know!
September 23rd, 2019 at 06:53am