NaNoWriMo - Are You Outta Your Effin Mind?

Halflon impulse,halfon dare, I decided to sign up for this years NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The deal is you commit to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The best thing about this is it's all about quantity over quality, perserverence over painstaking craft,according tothe websight. The sight has a utility that keeps a running word count. if you reach 50,000 words, you have won. I figure if I don't have 4,000 words by November 4, I am probably in trouble. I'll stick to this until it isn't working, hopefully that will not be November 1. Expect to see excerpts on the blog.

Inital planning and character building is happening in my head as I type this.I'm thinking about telling the story through flashback, an internal mind-conversation (yes,I know we get way too much of this in contempory fiction) of a man who is very ill and occasionally visited by the ghosts of a long deceased relative (what would I know about that, eh?). This format seems particularly appealing because continuity and plot development will be more elastic than I would need for the usual narrative. Did I mention I'll probably start with no real determined plot line,and, so far,only two well-defined characters (one of whom is dead). I am hoping each chapter might be the development of something important to the character, as he viewed and interpreted it, which may or may not have any relationship to any objective reality.

Yep, either that or he turns into a cockroach, who knows? All I know is that it better come out about as fast as I type.

K seems enthusiastic about the project, possibly even enough to read what comes out. Therefore, the protagonist might be single, in order to preserve domestic tranquility. Maybe he'll be a celebate monk or an Imperial Palace eunich. Maybe he'll fear facing eternity locked in a room with every exwife and exgirlfriend, none of them in the mood for love, all wanting to compare notes. You never know.

He sat in front of the computer, asking himself what was left to tell the inhabitants of his shrunken world. Feeling only an awkward emptyness where he looked for deep thoughts, he typed;

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it"