Puss Reboots: Blog: November 2009: Nanowrimo 2009

Nanowrimo 2009: 11/28/09

I just got the purple winner's bar for my word count at Nanowrimo. It's my fifth year and my fifth win. It was also one of my most difficult years, one I considered quitting a few times.

The first time I heard about Nanowrimo was in 2003, right after I had been laid off from Oracle. I was in a near panic at the time about having lost our benefits (along with the job) with my husband going back to graduate school for the ultimate goal of a PhD in mathematics (which he earned this May).

Come November 2004, I had been gainfully employed since January and I decided to give Nanowrimo a try. I won that year and have every year since. Some years have been easier than others.

Moonwalking: My first win was an urban paranormal mystery set in the Bay Area called Moonwalking. An out of work dot-com programmer has given up the tech industry to become a professional dog walker to match his cynicism. The dog walker meets and falls in love with an inn keeper from Half Moon Bay. There's just one problem: she's a werewolf with Russian mob ties. She might be tied to the disappearances of some prominent scientists.

Devil to Pay: Devil to Pay is one of my favorite Nanowrimo projects. It is the prequel to two other novels I'm working on (for fun) set on Planet Albion. Well meaning people in positions of power make a series of decisions that by themselves would be harmless but together cascade into an interspecies war and a political upheaval that will take decades to unravel. It was a chance for me to get into the minds of minor characters to see how they think, feel and react.

(Read it online)

The Big Toe of God: Archeologists find evidence of a UFO crash site thousands of years old. Could aliens from space have influenced the rise of mankind from simple upright ape to the creature he is today?

This book was fun but a challenge because I wanted the aliens to have spoken something similar to sanskrit. That meant I had to set the crash site near where the language and culture developed. This meant lots and lots of on the fly research as I was struggling to keep up my word count.

Tangent: An army vet just back from the war returns to his job as a surveyor. Two apparently unrelated land disputes help him and his crew realize that their world isn't what they think it is. Can they uncover the truth?

Secant: I had so many ideas at the end of November that I decided to write the sequel to explore the hidden world below the surface. I also exposed the lies behind the war and helped Sam Wilder, the surveyor see how their world was part of something much larger. I wouldn't be surprised if I revisit Sam's world in a future Nanowrimo.

Censorious Born: Alexander Selkirk leaves home for a life on the sea. He's stranded on an island with a kenam and together they build a life together. When they are finally able to leave the island Alex finds his life forever changed.

This year's Nanowrimo is set back on Planet Albion but in the future from any of my previous projects. From Precursor, it's about 125 years in the future. This timeline provided an interesting challenge, forcing me to think what the children (and grandchildren and great-grandchildren) are doing now. How has the political landscape changed? Is it better or worse? Or just different?

I loosely based the book on Robinson Crusoe (hence my main character's name). There are two books to Robinson Crusoe: the one on the island and a follow up book written a few years later where Crusoe tries to return to the island. For the first book (the well known story) I followed the book's pacing fairly closely while folding into my world and my characters. For the second book, I only kept the chapter titles and let my imagination run more freely.

This year I struggled mostly because I was distracted by the stress of being unemployed again. I felt like I needed to put my efforts into looking for work, not writing. I suppose I could have just blown off a couple of days of sending out resumes to write ten thousand words a day but I didn't. In fact I ran a deficit for the first two weeks of the month!

For 2010 I'm sure I'll be back to write again for Nanowrimo. I have no idea yet what story I will write or where it will be set.

books | scifi | writing | nanowrimo

Comments (4)

Permalink

Comments for Nanowrimo 2009

Nanowrimo 2009: 11/28/09

Recent posts