National Novel Writing Month 2010

National Novel Writing Month is almost here again, and I’m going to take it one step further this year than I did last year: I’m going to sign up on their website and post my progress on the magic Internets for all the world to see. I don’t recall exactly how I approached it last year, but I’m pretty sure I just started writing on November 1st without a thought in my head as to what I was going to write about for the next thirty days. This year, I have a vague idea of what I want to write about, and I even have some notes and a very short outline to help me get started.

What I’m not sure about is exactly how I want to approach the writing. Part of me wants to just start writing and not look back, to play with the style of writing I’ve been experimenting with for awhile - long sentences with little punctuation that approximate a sort of stream of consciousness that focuses on moments and details that are important to the narrator without sacrificing the progression of the narrative itself. That’s what I did with the story that was published in Ichabod’s Sketchbook; it was over 800 words, with only one punctuation mark - a period at the end. It’s easy enough to keep your head wrapped around what you’re writing about when the piece is that short - but it’s much harder to maintain focus when the work gets longer.

I want it to be serious work, but it’s going to be difficult to be serious and maintain the breakneck pace necessary to get 50,000 words written in thirty days; and that’s a big part of why I just want to lay into it and see where it goes, where the inner monolgue takes me and what it tells me about a blocked writer and why he’s blocked. (If I can ever shake the monkey of the elusive first novel off my back, I have a feeling that The Blocked Writer is going to become a pretty regular theme in my writing.)

I have a working title and the idea that it’s going to be five sections of 10,000 words each and that it will be constructed similarly to Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis in that the sections are all related without there being much in the way of direct transition between them. I also plan to experiment with point of view and tense, something that I have been interested in doing for some time but for which I have never found quite the right outlet (due in part, perhaps, to the aforementioned goddamn monkey).

Anyone else out there planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month - either officially or unofficially? if so, please add a comment to this post - I’d love to hear about it. Happy writing!