For the last couple of Novembers I’ve been aware of friends of mine being a part of ‘National Novel Writing Month‘, more often referred to (at least, on twitter) as NaNoWriMo.
So this afternoon, on a whim, I thought ‘I wonder if I can write a novel about some musicians who in some imaginary world start a cultural revolution, accidentally’ – I realised that it would be fun to have a go at writing a long-form hypothetical case study on how the world of music might work out. After all, it’s how a lot of novels work – either romantic or dystopic visions of an imaginary future for people and planet.
And of course, with one of the pithy descriptions of the project on the NaNoWriMo site being “Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.” there’s no pressure for it to be any good. I can focus on it being fun, let my imagination run wild without the constraints of a blog, or the compulsion to finish it/publish it/whatever.
And of course, I can mess with the format. And with that in mind, I’ve registered a twitter account for the only one of my characters so far that would be on Twitter – he’s @drum_monkey_ and is there to be talked to. I’d LOVE it if you chatted to him as the novel went on. The other characters will get onto Twitter too, as soon as it’s conceivable within their characters that they’d be on it, and I may even write a chapter or two on twitter as they talk to each other.
For now, if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, please feel free to follow my progress, on Twitter, or on the NaNoWriMo site.
Good luck with the novel Steve. I’ve done NaNoWriMo last two years and loved it. (Not doing it this year though, just too many things going on with Return to Earth and Mr Gig).
Looking forward to the tweets too, an interesting way to develop characters.
Andy
Cool Steve! Good luck with NaNoWriMo. If it helps to motivate you, I’m not a writer at all and I wrote the required 50,000 words in both 2006 and 2007. My novels stink, but I think that it enabled me to see the link between music and literature, which eventually led to me doing my Sci-Fi Songs.
Best of Luck and I’ll be sure to follow your progress
hey dude, awesome to hear you’re doing nanowrimo, unfortunately i can’t do it this year, literally don’t have a spare second in between organising the novel launch project thing, but i had super fun doing it last year. Created a horror / sci-fi epic of ghosts vs vampires vs zombies vs ‘ghost marines’ vs a giant purpose bread killing machine called ‘Tokyo Collider’, it’s seriously awesome!
anyway, have fun with it, and a quick tip, dialogue is best for getting the word count up without having to think too much 🙂
I’ve decided to join in with this all, but only for a week (NaNoWriWe?), maybe next year i’ll thrash out a novel.
i’m gonna start on monday, you’ll see the updates about it no doubt steve 🙂
I promised my 11-year-old nephew I would do this with him this year but totally forgot. He, of course, is well over 6,000 words already. Well, there’s always next year!
Good luck with your novel, Steve – I know it will be great!
Haha! That’s brilliant! I hope I get to read the story some day!! 🙂