Just An Update

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year, trying to write 100,000 words about a future without limitless oil, after the long, slow, punctuated collapse of the American Empire and the rise of a whole raft of new nations in the rubble of the postindustrial future. The point of this is, of course, to note that you're not going to be hearing much from me here on the blog this month. You should be able to keep track of my progress on the NaNoWriMo widget over to the side, if you care. I need to make around 3333 words each day on average to stay on track. I started off well enough, writing 3480 words on my first day. Wish me luck!

Done

Just finished up the novel that I was writing for NaNoWriMo. It came in at 50,001 words, and had an actual ending. The setting was a science-fantasy one that I had originally developed as a sketch for a possible gaming setting. There is more fleshed out now! Among other things, I discovered the beginnings of the necromantic city-state of Mardras. The details of that city-state changed somewhat to accommodate the specifics of the Terra Ultima setting, but I can always change even those around to move Mardras to whatever setting I like.

Now, I am going to relax for a couple of days.

Quickly Checking In

Well, I'm doing well in the NaNoWriMo writing challenge, ahead of schedule in terms of the number of words I've written as opposed to the number I'd need to write in order to finish 50,000 words in 30 days.

I don't have a lot to say in regard to gaming lately, but that's because my attention is focused on the story. On the other hand, I'm taking my experience of dungeon crawling as an element of the story. It occurred to me as I was writing that the logistical segment of play is not only interesting but essential, and my characters have spent several days (both in the story and in terms of how long I've been writing this section) preparing for their expedition into the hidden temple that lies underneath the city.

I've also managed to throw in some philosophy, and it grew out of the story and characters, rather than being imposed on it and them.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing. Do you have any projects that are occupying your time this month?

How To Be A Writer

I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo this year, so don't expect a whole lot of posting from me in the next 30 days. I'm going to try to post something here, but I've never done this before so I don't know how much time and thought I will have available for other things like this blog. I do have Goth of the Week posts queued up for the next few weeks, so at least those will show up. Maybe I'll make posts about how many words I've written, but I can't guarantee that.

I've got a lot of resources available to me, from books about the specific contest (one written by the founder of NaNoWriMo, actually, which is basically a motivational seminar in book form - very helpful, actually, as far as I can see) to books on plot - and gaming tools like S. John Ross's Big List of RPG Plots and Mythic Game Master Emulator. Writing a novel in this way is actually rather like the improvisation involved in gaming, where I won't know at the start how everything is going to go, except perhaps in vague outline.

One of the important "rules" of NaNoWriMo (there's really only one rule: WRITE!) is to let yourself suck. Shut off the inner editor and just get words on paper. I've joked that I plan to spend the whole month writing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." over and over, but I don't have the ability to live in an empty hotel for the month.

I also plan to keep up a schedule of watching TV and movies on occasion (hooray for Netflix), in order to keep my creative juices flowing through inspiration from other sources. My goal in this is to work on stylistic issues, so hackneyed plotting, cardboard characters, and hokey situations are perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, the idea of letting yourself suck may also be a useful idea for gaming. It's all too easy to work on setting and adventure until the end of time. For it to be played, which is pretty much the point of a gaming setting or adventure, it has to be let go. Everything can be prettied up at the table, after all, just as the novel gets prettied up in the rewriting phase. (How's that for a cheap attempt to shoehorn gaming content into this post?) The point is that the way to be a writer is to write, just as the way to be a gamer is to play games.