As November approaches I find myself once again pondering NaNoWriMo. I have tried before and get so easily sidetracked…. but I am still considering trying again this year. If I do, it will be with one of three already-in-progress novels — two of which have been the subject of previous NaNoWriMo attempts.
Whatever I do, I want to start with an outline, before I dive in further. Only one of the three has an outline, and it isn’t complete; the other two have notes that need to be fleshed out. So what are the three projects? Working titles and outlines:
Undead — YA dystopia, big pharma is the enemy here. Central character is a teen girl; the undead are not zombies but are no longer human. Current word count, a little over 24K; notes but no outline. I worked on this one for NaNoWriMo in 2011 and posted the opening of the first chapter.
Maureen — based on a character from a short story I wrote called “You Can’t Fight City Hall” about an evil bureaucrat, this novel gets deeper into Maureen’s life. Current word count, about 6K; notes but no outline. This was my first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2006. I fizzled out pretty quickly and thought I had lost this through various computer shuffles but recently found the file again. Hurrah!
Better than 50 — my angry attempt to write something better than Fifty Shades — an adult novel to say the least. Current word count around 3600; incomplete outline and 5 chapters (only chapter one is complete). I will probably continue plodding away at this, regardless, if only to make a few bucks, since it seems even mediocre erotica sells well.
Obviously Undead is the closest to complete and it mostly makes sense to start with that… but I kind of want to tackle one of the others because I can easily add 50K words to the existing word counts. Or I could start something new. It’s tempting to just roll a D4.
If you have any thoughts/preferences I’d love to hear them.