On par with my commitment with Yershi the Mild, NaNoWriMo implies that I will write a 50,000-word novel (a fairly short one) in 30 days. For those of you interested in critiquing the work, you can join me at the Targhee Writers Blog, where I will share snippets and such. I may occasionally post a bit here – if I can actually write something decent – but most of it will be under Internet lock and key so I don’t surrender my first publishing rights to the world at large.
Starting out by cheating a little, stacking the deck in my
favor, by working on The Hermit of Iapetus. I don’t feel bad starting out with
some words in place, as at this point it’s more of a collection of thoughts and
ideas than even a rough draft of a novel, so there’ll be some refining and
stitching along the way that will make the guilt go away pretty fast.
This novel makes me a bit nervous, however. Even though I
just went where the story took me with Yershi the Mild, it’s different with the
Hermit – because he’s not really going anywhere. He’s schizophrenic, or at
least he thinks he is, and lives alone on a remote moon of Saturn, or at least
he thinks he does. He might or might not have a son who joins him, or he just
might have Richard Nixon as a companion. Honestly, this could go anywhere, and
that wide-openness is a bit unnerving. Too much wandering by the author and the
readers will wander off as well. If they haven’t already. You have to ask
yourself: Who is more foolish? The novel character or the author who follows
him?
I do have a cover, though. It went together fairly easily.
As is probably evident:
What I need to do is look at the freewheeling possibilities
here and have fun with them. Here’s a chance to write a novel that’s not
formulaic (like the one I’m reading now; more on that later this week if I can
actually finish the awful thing).
No comments:
Post a Comment