Let the Pens Begin! National Novel Writing Month 2009

It is just over four hours until the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) here in the Pacific Time Zone. My friend Jack Graham started hours and hours ago, since he is in Sasebo, Japan. I know what he is going to write for NaNoWriMo this year, but I ain't gonna tell you... that's a good rule. What I will tell you is that Jack, who is a high school geometry teacher, has set up a local NaNoWriMo group composed of teachers and students from E. J. King High which is located on an army base. I will look forward to watching their pages pile up!

But, you ask, Nan, you are an established author! You don't need to prove to yourself you can write a novel. I blush, clear my throat, shuffle my feet and thank you for your generous assessment - and cast a baleful eye at the rest of you who giggled and rolled your eyes. But I answer your implied question, why am I doing NaNoWriMo? That's easy. Once I had my magnum opus finished and published, and it took me three years, not one friggin' month, all my drive seems to have wandered. I keep getting plotbunnies. That's not the problem, as most authors can attest. I just need to focus. The first novel had been brewing in me for decades. Now I had to see if I could start from scratch. I have started three novels since last fall, but while one, my NaNoWriMo from 2008, is nearly done, I have never finished it. I keep going back and forth between my mystery and a book of short pieces, fictionalized accounts of life in Anglo Saxon England. Coincidentally November happened again in 2009.. and I thought, hey, this could be just the thing!

What I hope to accomplish for NaNoWriMo 2009 is to get back into the habit of writing on a daily basis again. No wait, I do that now, but it's not books. I write blog entries, lots of them. I write little bits of fluff like this, book reviews, biographies of women in history, occasional fun pieces for Ghostletters. Other stuff. I want to get back into that magical addictive mindset of writing a single story. I want to get involved in people I am just now meeting, my characters. I want that state of mind where I am lost somewhere and sometime else. And I want that if at all possible to become my permanent state... Once one story is done, I start the next. They say it takes 21 days to develop a habit. NaNoWriMo is plenty long enough. To make the 50,000 words in 30 days I will have to write an average 1,667 words a day. I plan to do more, since I might actually want to come up for air on Thanksgivbing Day at least. I think I can write for as many as four hours at a stretch.. we'll see.

I also want a second novel (third book, fifth if you count my volunteer resource management training manuals) written and shopped to publishers. Do I know what I want to write? Boy howdy! It was just a cute little baby plotbunnty until about a month ago. I wanted to do a woman/woman love story with one a the women a crusader knight. Yeah, I now, there weren't any women knights. Well I am here to tell you that the research I have done in the past month puts that absolute statement of truth into doubt. And besides, historical fiction has a speculative aspect. What if? And I have come up with a plausible set of circumstances for how this phenomenon might come to pass. Don't worry, there will be an author's note giving my evidence and apolligies and resisting the temptation to tell people who don't like it to relax and enjoy the story.

I will set my story during the Crusade of 1101, one of the lesser known Crusades that was basically a farce - a tragic farce, but a farce all the same. It is also called the Crusade of the Faint-hearted because it was peopled by those who didn't quite actually, you see, I mean, I tried to go, but.. there was this.. um.. thing.. I had to do. Oh and others who did go but ran away. It was such a disaster it made all the subsequent Crusades harder to do. It gave rise to the power of the Italian merchant city-states because it lost the safe route so only ships could get to the Holy Land. I should restate that. The Crusade was an unqualified success. For the Turks. Into this flopping about and cowardly behavior on the part of the leaders of the crusade I am dropping my ear lest Elisabeth, a Herman novlewoman who takes her late twin brother's armor, weapons and squire and heads off to free .. well.. something from someone. or something. She will meet a Turkish woman, fall in love, and various hijinks will ensue. Will it end tragically or happily? I don't know for sure yet. My characters will tell me as the writing goes along.

If you would like to track my progress, the little widget in the upper right of this blog will theoretically keep up with that, though it isn't working yet and I can't get an answer from the folks at NaNo as to what to do about that. You can also check my author page on their site.

nicol_harrity's Novel Writing Page

... yes, I know.. that's not my name. Actually it is. That's my pen name for erotic novels, which is what I wrote last year, an erotic romance set in Oxfordshire right after Waterloo. My novel this year is not an erotic novel per se, but it was just easier to keep the same account.

Wish me luck, be patient with me, and I look forward to reporting on December 1 how it all went. As the road signs say, if you write to me, "expect delays".