This is becoming a bit of a yearly event with me: I get geared up for NANOWRIMO and then get sidetracked onto something else. I’m using my idea NANOWRIMO this year in my upcoming zombie online RPG, and I don’t know if I really have it in me to write a full novel.

We’ll see if I have the will to put down 40,000 words in a month, but it seems like a big endeavor when I’m hardly prepared.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again — time for the National Novel Writing Month contest, which encourages authors all over the globe to write at least a rough draft of a novel in one month. I have managed to fail three different times, with last year’s gargoyle love story stone cold in week two.

I might give zombies a try this year, or writing about Lady Jaye’s workplace and its real-life metaphysical powers.

What are you going to write about this year?

I took a (somewhat) later flight out to California this trip, which allowed me to leave the house two hours later than usual. Instead of sleeping all the way here like I normally do, I planned on writing my entry for the National Novel Writer’s Month. I picked up my nice pen that Lady Jaye gave me, flipped open my notebook, and wrote all of two dozen words before I was completely uninterested in continuing.

I feel that my story idea is feeble. While I could probably grunt out 40,000 words or whatever, it wouldn’t be anything worth sharing. And in the end, I’d rather spend my time doing other things instead of writing something I don’t think will be any good.

cymwyd made a good comment to me over IM yesterday about how some authors felt more comfortable writing short stories and some felt better writing novels. I guess if I were to do Nano next year, maybe I’d aim for a Sin City-like collection of short stories centered around a defined group of characters. As it stands now, all I have are character sketches, and they aren’t even great ones at that.

Better luck next year!

I may not be participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. The problem? Same as my previous attempts, I lack a storyline. I have some decent ideas for characters and their backgrounds, but nothing that really ties them together, and certainly nothing that would result in anything reminicient of an epic conclusion. I could easily crank out some character sketches, but that’s as far as my ideas take me.

I’m going to put it up here as a poll, so you can give me the thumbs up or thumbs down before I begin my 50,000 word oddessey. For some reason I’m more nervous about putting my idea up than talking about nearly failing my motorcycle safety course or the dorkiness associated with running a roleplaying game about zombies.

OK, here goes:

$nameUndecided is a highly respected and skilled guard for an old king. His primary duty is to safeguard the king’s young queen. He follows her everywhere, and in Lancelot fashion falls in love with her and they have copius amounts of knight-on-queen humpy near babbling brooks with wildflowers gently blowing in the spring breeze. Of course, they are found out — by the king’s somewhat spooky advisor — and the queen is locked in a tower for the rest of her life. The king’s advisor has other plans for $nameUndecided, however. To make amends for breaking his vow of servitude, $nameUndecided is cursed to become a gargoyle, crouching motionless and silent until bidden to do the wishes of the king and the rest of his line, forever. As war and time march on, $nameUndecided is made to do some fairly unscrupulous things under the command of the king and his decendants.

Fast forward to modern era. $nameUndecided is brought to America as an exhibit on European architecture. He has been dormant for some time, but tingles to life as he feels one of the king’s decendants near: a young woman named Clara who is completely unaware of her heritage and her hold over the cursed knight.

This is where I sorta fall apart. Shit happens, $nameUndecided comes to the rescue, ancient Christian watchgroup starts to hunt down the “demon” gargoyle and its evil mistress, and soon there’s lots of shooting, crashing through buildings, the Spear of Longinus, and copius amounts of gargoyle-on-woman humpy near babbling brooks with wildflowers gently blowing in the spring breeze.

What say ye?

The National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo, starts in November. For those of you unfamiliar with Nanowrimo, it’s an event that attempts to get writers to crank out a novel. It doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t even have to be edited, it just has to have enough words to be counted as a novel. Sure, you could just type “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again, but that makes you a psycho and not a novelist.

I’ve entered Nanowrimo twice. My first attempt was the closest. I had been laid off from my job in Oregon earlier that year, and by the fall I realized that I wasn’t going to find any legit employment in the mountain town that I had grown to love. I spent my mornings telecommuting for an old client in Seattle, and my afternoons scribbling out my Nanowrimo entry. I filled two notebooks with material. Unfortunately, my idea for a story was lame, even by my standards. I was about to start notebook three and knew that I had already jumped the shark within my own story, within the first novel. I caved in and did not finish. I didn’t even make it past character sketches and outlines the next year.

I took last year off, and I guess that brings us to this year, right? I may have left a year out there somewhere. I’ve had a horrible sense of my own personal timeline lately and should probably chart it out. It’d make an interesting post, that’s for sure.

In honor of failing twice before, I’m going to enter Nanowrimo again this year. I’m not sure what I’m going to write about … zombies have been playing heavily on my mind, especially due to the Year of the Zombie campaign I’m running, but perhaps that wouldn’t make the best novel. Oh well, I have about a month to decide!

So, I challenge the six or so of you that read this journal — are you up for writing a novel this year?