Nanowrimo 2010 - here it comes again!

I am very excited about this year's National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) and another chance to write a first draft.

I can't believe that I have never thought of this before, but this year is a superhero novel. This will be my ninth first draft and I am determined to finish the 50,000 words even if I nearly missed my first four days at a management training course in Sydney and I'm behind by 6-7000 words.

I have been reading superhero novels running in the months leading up to November, and really liked "Soon, I will be Invincible" by Austin Grossman and "Karma Girl" by Jennifer Estep, but didn't like "Leaper" by Geoffrey Wood or "Hot Mama" also by Jennifer Estep.

I have also bought two other superhero novels from the Whitcoulls on-line e-book store to put on my Kobo e-book reader. I just bought "From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain" by Minister Faust about a psychologist to the world's best superhero team, and "Masked" by Lou Anders (Editor), an anthology of superhero fiction.

My novel features The Wingman, a superhero whose powers allow him to be second best at everything. He has a mimicking power that allows him to copy abilities, including super abilities from those around him. However, he let his team down years ago and they were slaughtered by a team of villains. Now, he's a pariah to the world, including other superheroes. Worse, this has spilled into his own mind and he doubts his own value.

At the beginning of the novel, the Wingman finds evidence for a serial killer who is killing aliens who live on earth. With his only remaining superhero friend, Raymond Taylor, aka "the General", leader of The Famous Five, they begin tracking down who is responsible.

SpecFicNZ Blogging Week – Day 2, superhero novels

I have recently read "Soon, I will be INVINCIBLE!" by Austin Grossman, a fun jaunt into superhero novels. I enjoyed it enough that I decided that it would be my genre for November's Nanowrimo novel.

If any genre defies Specfic boundaries and bleeds between sci-fi, fantasy and horror, it's superhero novels. A woman in a high tech battle suit teams up with an alien gladiator to fight a villain using an ancient Babylonian artifact to kill the Prime Minister of Uruguay for his own evil plans. What a lovely combination!

I think I'll enjoy November - I have never written in that genre and I am a huge comic book fan. There is so much material to choose from and so many directions it can go. I can do almost pure fantasy or pure sci-fi or a combination, introduce vampires or werewolves, have sorcerers turning the streets of New York into a replica of ancient Greece and have it all observed by an immortal alien sent to earth to observe, but who feels the need to interfere.

Indeed - very fun November. I think I'm excited enough to do the Kiwiwriters Prep-challenges in the archive before November.

4th annual SoCNoC continues...

I've had this story in my head since November's Nanowrimo. I've mulled it over and talked about it with some friends and read a book that had some similar ideas between then and now.

Strangely enough, for such a fully formed story idea, it's been slow going. I'm at 11,597 words so far, which is a full day behind yesterday's required pace (13,333), let alone today's (15,000). Probably the slowest I've had in the first 9 days of any novel writing month, since I always tend to hover around the slightly ahead mark (last year was a little wonky, since I had a house move, but that's exceptional and only later in the month).

Oh? You want to hear about the story?

I have five, count 'em, five threads all with the same main character happening at the same time. The settings are a soldier in a war, the member of an Antarctic expedition, a monk in training, a software developer in Montreal and finally, a businessman working with a scientist. Eventually, they begin to meet each other. The question is, why are there duplicates? Who made them? What is their purpose?

4th Annual SoCNoC starting tomorrow!

SoCNoC, to those who don't know, is "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge", which is to some of you, a difficult, challenging, novel writing competition where competitors write 50,000 words in one, 30 day month. To others like myself, it's a giddy, beautiful, roller coaster ride of excitement and fun. Not that I would ever imply that these things can't overlap!

I'm sure that there are people reading this saying, "What Travis? Another novel writing month? I thought you did one in November?!"

Indeed, November is a novel writing month, but that's "National Novel Writing Month" or Nanowrimo, is a completely different beast. SoCNoC is set up for people in the southern hemisphere, where the weather cooperates during June to keep people indoors and writing (true for the last three weeks!).

SoCNoC is special to me since it is, at least partially, my creation. This is a photo of the original Kiwiwriters crew dreaming up something that would let us do writing challenges all year round:


I'm not in the photo, since I was taking it, but that's my old place, I swear it is. Left to right, it's Andy, Chris, Jane and Kerryn. Andy came up with the name "SoCNoC", which is one of his many, brilliant contributions. Kerryn is still the energy that keeps the site going.

Although I haven't done a thorough check, I believe I am the only person to have completed every single SoCNoC (three so far), and I plan to finish this one as well. I have an idea lined up and I'm ready to go. Tomorrow is the day.

I'll see you all in the writing trenches!

Oh the news! Where to start?! Nano, Twitter and a sci-fi reading challenge

NANOWRIMO

Firstly, it is Nanowrimo yet again, and here I am writing another novel (this will be my 7th - I've finished all of my Nanowrimos and SocNocs so far).

I've gone sci-fi again. This time, the story is set about 80 years in the future. The main character is Paul, a physical trainer. In the future where most people spend all of their time "inside", i.e. plugged into a virtual world, physical trainers take over people's bodies, exercising the limp and atrophied muscles that lay around while their owners are plugged in, which is most of the time.

Paul is a bit of a Luddite and spends as much of his time as possible "outside", living his life in the "real world" except where his job requires.

Paul is thrown for a loop when he lets someone take over one of his clients for a few minutes and the client ends up dead. He is then pulled into a civil war he never knew was happening where some people who spend their time "outside" are trying to bring down the network, which they feel is gradually leaching people of their humanity.

So far, I'm 1 day and 2300 words in. I'm quite excited about what I see as a good idea.

Funny story, I had a part of my whole novel idea (the "physical trainer" part) through October - it's an idea that's been sitting around in my brain for a few years, but I've never used it before. Then, I go to bed on October 31st, thinking about the story. While I sleep, my subconscious chews on it and when I wake up to write around 7:15 on Sunday morning, another story idea I had buried in my brain came up to merge with the first and I'm pleased with where it's going.

The 2nd idea , also a few years old is about someone living "outside" of the network when most of the world is plugged in. The outside is now a museum, where buses run and the infrastructure is maintained via high-tech trickery, but almost no one lives in the real world. It started with a scene where someone goes out to look around, day after day, week after week and is alone every day. One day, on a bus driving through empty streets, out of the blue, he meets another person who is doing the same thing as he is. This idea just seemed to gel with the first, so I've merged them together.

TWITTER
To change the subject - I've started to twitter. My username is traviscottreau (appropriately enough - I tried to put a dot in the middle to match my gmail account, but it wouldn't let me). I figured that I would use it to report my nano stats and keep in contact with other Nanoers.

SCI-FI CHALLENGE
And finally, a science-fiction reading challenge. I am a member of Shelfari, an on-line book club that I quite enjoy and while browsing on that site, I found a science-fiction reading challenge in one of the groups. There are 40 categories of books that you have to read in the next year. With a few double ups allowed (no triple ups allowed), it comes out to a minimum of 35 books that have to be read in the next year. I am keeping track of my progress on a google docs spreadsheet that I've made public for viewing. I'm quite excited about this, since I have a few sci-fi books at home that I haven't read and have been procrastinating about - why not add a challenge to get through them and announce it on my blog?

If anyone sees a category that I haven't filled in, but have a suggestion for, I'm more than happy to listen. I'll keep some progress on here and probably on twitter I imagine.

I am starting with "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, which counts as my "young adult" category in the challenge.

Hello, my name is Travis and I'm a recovering book addict

I am subscribed to the Borders mailing list (just ask, they can add you too). This week until Thursday, there is 50% off coupon available to people on the list. It looks like this:


After my Nanowrimo weekly write in today, I dropped by Borders and brought this coupon. Just so you know, I have a large pile of books that I am trying to read that I might never get through, since I keep adding to it and can't read as fast as I add.

Anyway, I'm proud to say that I did NOT buy any books. I feel like a recovering alcoholic who accidentally wandered into the beer isle at the grocery story who got out without buying anything.

I have made it a resolution to reduce my book pile several times, but after a reasonable start, I pretty much forget about it and go as normal. This feels like a step forward.

It's "Sign up a friend week" for Nanowrimo!

It's November next month. And you know what that means? It's Nanowrimo, and that means yet another novel.

Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who might read this has probably already decided yea or nay on this, if anyone reading this has ever had an tickle of an idea that they might have a novel in them, I can't recommend Nanowrimo enough to you.

It is a rush and a pleasure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you are done.

I'm as excited as I've ever been about my story idea, and I can't wait to get writing. I have already started outlining and that's unusual for me!

Here's to a great novel writing month!

Nanowrimo 2007

I have been quiet on my blog of late - not a whole lot to say... well, not true, lots to say, but I've been putting all my words into my latest novel for National Novel Writing Month. Nano is the greatest thing ever and I plan to do it until I die. May I finish every year.

I struggled this year, and for the first time, I've reached the end of my 50k words and NOT finished my story. I plan to continue, because I liked the writing and love the idea.

This year, my novel is called "The Holy Book of Janus" and is about a far, far future where a space man is stranded on a primitive planet and becomes their messiah. This time around though, he gets to read what all the gospelers are writing about him. How will it turn out? Well, it's not done yet, but I have a good idea now that I've hit my 50,000 words.

Have Faith in God

Downtown Wellington, Lambton Quay, there's this old guy handing out pamphlets. There were two pamphlets, one folded inside the other. The outside one was labeled "Have Faith in God" and the inside one was labeled "Specially for you!".

While Una was shopping, I read through every bit of it and every quote. I have been reading lots of biblical scholarship lately, preparing for my fictional bible during National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) next month.

"Have Faith in God" was just various quotes from the New Testament while "Specially for you!" was one quote plus description.

It described that it had a message for me, and said, "First of all, let me emphasize that this message is absolutely true, because it is God who said it."

It then quoted John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The ridiculousness of the description sentence bowled me over. "... because it is God who said it."

Don't get me wrong, while I'm an atheist, I feel that the King James Version of John 3:16 is one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language. It's a lovely sentiment and there's a reason it's one of the most recognized passages from the bible.

However, to say that God said it means two things:
1) God speaks in the third person, which is unacceptable, since anyone who speaks of themselves in the third person is completely annoying
2) The guy who actually wrote it isn't getting any credit at all. Surely, God would want to give credit where credit is due.

Throughout the Old Testament, God speaks in first person all the time, "for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" for example. So why would He switch all of a sudden? I think the most likely thing is that the pamphlet was wrong. Comments?

Snippet of my writing

I don't post many pieces of my stories, but I've been in the mood to write, and have been gearing up for The Southern Cross Novel Challenge in June and decided to have a play with some of the characters from the novel. This one is part of "The Station Challenge" from kiwiwriters a few months ago, as well as "a small descriptive challenge" some time later.

So, take a look at the short piece called "Natasha".

Signed up for SoCNoC 2007

What are you doing this June? Me, I'm writing my 2nd novel.

Seeing as Nanowrimo happens in November, just when the weather is getting more and more like summer, Kiwiwriters decided to set up a novel challenge more in line with the Southern Hemisphere. So, June it is.

50,000 words and a massive rush of accomplishment, Kiwiwriters brings you SoCNoC, "The Southern Cross Novel Challenge".

Here is my participation certificate... I'm sincerely hoping for a winner's certificate at the end of June!



I highly recommend that you join us. Good luck!

Waitangi Weekend Word Wace - the struggle

The first official site-wide challenge is up on the kiwiwriters site. This is the Waitangi Weekend Word Wace. For any non New Zealanders who might be reading this, Waitangi day is the equivalent of the 4th of July in the US, Canada Day in Canada, or Australia Day in Aussie. Basically, Waitangi day represents the country's anniversary.

Our fledgling writing site will have several challenges each year, including this one. Being most of the way through it so far, I have to say, it's much tougher than I was expecting. It's 7500 words in 4 days, which is slightly more words on a per day basis than Nanowrimo was back in November, but during Nano, I was hitting an average of over 2200 words per day, and hit the 5000 word per day rate a couple of times, so I thought that it would be easy.

Not so... I guess life is just getting in the way, but I was experimenting with some of my writing, and that made it harder, especially writing in the present tense. I noticed slipping back into past tense many, many times and I would always go back and fix it.

I picked up some of my favorite novels sitting on the shelf behind me and took a look at their styles. This isn't something that you notice while reading, but now that I'm writing, I'm noticing more and more. My favorites are almost exclusively written in 3rd person and done in the past tense. I have read in various writing books that writing in the present tense adds to the impact of the writing, but strangely enough, none of the novels I've picked up are written that way. If I notice any, I'll post some comments on here.

Kerryn, a friend of mine (Writing Angel Blog) suggested writing the same piece (page or paragraph) several times, each time in a different tense. This is too smart to ignore, so I will try it shortly.

New writing resource page

It was the end of November, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) was almost over and a small group of Wellington writers got together to celebrate the insanity of writing 50,000 words in one month.

As it turns out, we got along so well that we decided we have to extend this insanity, we have to share it with the rest of the world, well, the southern hemisphere anyway. November was over - long live November!

So, like gears turning, our little minds went to work, scheming and plotting, planning and organizing, making check lists and checking them off, putting notches on our bedposts, creating a googlegroup and buying a domain name.

Two months later, we have a new web page ready to unveil! Muahahahaah... it's alive! It's alive!

The goal of this page: Nanowrimo has been so good to us, why have that feeling confined to November? We are gradually adding functionality to the page to let members issue writing challenges to everyone interested. The site will have "official" challenges like weekend short story writing (Waitangi Weekend Word Wace this weekend) to a full, Nanowrimo like novel writing contest in June ( Southern Cross Novel Challenge or SocNoc for short), but the real fun is in issuing your own challenge and seeing how everyone does and how many people you can get to join you! Want to write a travel guide for Palmerston North? Want to write that love letter to your partner that you've been putting off? Why not make it official and get other people to spread the love?

Join us in craziness, join us in fun - for whatever reason, please join us at kiwiwriters.org

After Nanowrimo - downer

I have to say, the Nanowrimo, novel writing month was a huge high... the beginning, the progress, the finishing - all exciting and life changing.

Here I am, at the end of the month, rough draft in hand, feeling a little down. I still feel like writing, but unlike when I was working on my novel, there seem to be good excuses to not write!

I'm hoping that a new novel writing group with spur me on (maybe not a good approach! Ha!) . All I need is something to read to them when we gather, and that will probably work out.

Also - I'm reading and almost done "No Plot? No Problem!" by Chris Baty - a good book for sure. A real preparation manual for Nanowrimo - I wish I'd had it before I'd finished my novel. I will be reading it again before the next novel writing month - likely to happen in June, although I'm sure there will be other writing before then.

A few key items in the book that I found good ideas that I never followed in my month:
1) Outline for a week or so before the novel writing starts (I worked on the fly all the way)
2) keep a "novel ideas" file open at the same time as the novel to put random thoughts
3) Some word processor ideas to mark bits and pieces as being "bad", i.e. transparent etc..

Otherwise, I think I did pretty well - I regret not outlining more, as it left my novel in a sorry state - not publishable without sizeable edits, large sections removed or relocated etc... A jumble of ideas. I like the ideas though - so that is a huge accomplishment. I'm just having trouble going back to it.

Someone did offer to do a novel swap though, and I'm reading "Shark" by atomic_willis, although I'm still days away from a real review.

Nanowrimo 2006

If you're ever, ever, ever even remotely considered writing a novel (I have for years - since I was a teenager), then I highly recommend trying out the Nanowrimo competition. The 2006 one is almost over - it happens in November every year, but there is always next year.

It is a competition with yourself, there are no prizes except that if you finish, you have a nice, shiny new rough draft of a novel. The support network is amazing, full of like minded, delusional people also trying to finish a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Check out www.nanowrimo.org site.

I was roped into this by my good friend Andy, who casually pointed me to the web page one day in an email, subject line: “Interesting Challenge”. So, something like 3 or 4 months later, we're chatting about it in the weeks leading up to November.

Andy: “So, are you going to do it?”

Travis: “Sure! Why the hell not?”

My first day, November 1st. I couldn't sleep, I'm up just after 6AM, wired (I don't drink coffee - this is caffeine free!). I am at work by 7:15AM (unprecedented outside of a support call). I start writing. I was a purist – while the site says you are allowed all the outlining you want before November, as long as you write the prose starting midnight Nov 1, I didn't even know the main character's name going in. No outlines - nothing but a concept that had come to me while watching a mediocre sci-fi movie.

8:30AM, I'm at 1400 words and completely stoked. I know, know that I will finish this. It is one of the greatest moments of my life! That made it all worth it, that first morning.

I never duplicated that feeling for the rest of November. However, it was pretty close, when at 6:45 on November 22^nd, I check my word count and I'm at 50016 words! It is awesome, and I love my ending – I can hardly ask for more!

Check it out – you will thank me!