My kick off day for NaNo began, not as smoothly as I would have hoped, but it began nevertheless dragging me by my feet, bouncing my head on the ground, setting me on the high dive, and forcing me to jump off only to let me know their was no water in the pool as I was falling. Okay, maybe not that bad, but enough snags to give me less of a word count than I had hoped for. But I'm not upset. I'm okay. It's all cool.
Here was my plan: I was going to take the newspaper and find 5 interesting articles and weave them into a story. I have frequently gotten story ideas from newspaper articles so I figured that this was a surefire plan. What I didn't take into account, but really should have suspected, the Los Angeles Times doesn't have much interesting content anymore. I've heard this complaint about other newspapers as well. I recall when you could find some wonderfully bizarre stories in every edition of a newspaper. Now in the L.A.Times you find strange tales every once in a while, but mostly they want to be really significant, but they fail miserably.
Okay I found 5 stories that were not as wonderful as I had hoped, so I needed to come up with some supplementary back up material.
Fortunately I had a somewhat interesting dream before I woke up on Sunday morning. Before I even got my hands on the morning paper I already had a story brewing. Also, before I could get to the newspaper, I went to church. In the sermon, the pastor talked about the second chapter of Deuteronomy which was about the Israelites wandering in the desert and Hebrews 12:5-11 which talks about how God disciplines those that he loves-- 2nd story inspiration.
After various other familial obligations I was able to get to the paper Sunday afternoon at which time I got my 5 articles to use as story tie-ins. Then I started writing. I was originally going to plot out a story with the articles but I decided to come back to that later and just start writing the opening of the novel with the story seeds planted from my first inspirations. I don't have a plot yet, but I think I have a pretty strong opening. I only made it to about 1500 words on the first day, but I think I got some real momentum going and things should pick up as the week progresses.
Good news--- got two blog posts for the upcoming week finished yesterday. And put some more ideas for some future posts down. Also made several comments on other blogs and responded to some comments on my blog. So believe me, I was staying pretty busy.
And by the way--- here is the title of the novel into which I will be pouring myself into:
A DESERT PLACE
So far the novel starts with the discovery of a dead body and a briefcase full of cash by a main character named Joe Bloom. By next week I should have a synopsis which may appear on the NaNo site before next Monday. First I need to work out the details about who the dead guy is and why the money is there.
Hope the rest of the NaNo'ers are having fun.
Monday, November 2, 2009
5 comments:
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Lee
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There are several blogs that are involved in NaNo, which has inspired to try some of this on my own. Thanks for your post today. What you're doing is such a guideline! Good luck on keeping increasing your word count!
ReplyDeleteLee, were you the one trying to work up 100 others to blog or was that as followers?
ReplyDeleteGlad to have stumbled across your blog!
ReplyDeleteI am having a blast with NaNo. If only I could quit my day job and write full time. *Sigh*
The words start to spill after about the first 100 words.
Happy writing!
Judy, to answer the question about my goal of 100, that would be that I am trying to reach 100 followers to my blog site before the end of November. I suppose it is an exercise in vanity to one extent, however I feel the point of blogging would be to have someone reading, especially if you feel like you have something worthwile to say. I do strive for quality content and I spend time with my postings, therefore I hope that there are readers who are interested and continue to return. I realize that having 100 followers doesn't necessarily mean that I have 100 readers, but my odds of increasing readership do get better as followers increase.
ReplyDeleteSo, Judy, if you know of some others that you might think would be interested in what I write about, please, I would be so grateful if you would send them my way and encourage them to sign on.
I really do appreciate your support and I have been checking your postings as well since I found your blogs.
Thanks!
Lee
Howdy Tamika(that's a pretty name),
ReplyDeleteThanks for checking out my blog, which in turn motivated to look at your blog -- looks like you're doing some nice stuff so I'll keep checking back.
Don't quit your day job unless you are in a financial position to do so or you hate your job and it's making you sick. A company closure put me in my postion of unemployment for the past months so I decided to take the lemons I'd been given and make lemonade.
I would never have had time to blog and do NaNo if I were still working my last job. I'm thinking this situation is just God giving me an opportunity to pursuit a life-long dream of writing. Good luck with your novel!
By the way, my NaNo name is wordleeness -- you can add me as a writing buddy if you like and keep up with my progress.
Lee