Speed-Writing for Fun and Prizes! (Not really.)

For those of you who don't know, I am about to attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Or I should say, a rough draft of a book. Very rough. I'm co-opting a methodology employed in NaNoWriMo (NAtional NOvel-WRIting MOnth - nanowrimo.org) which normally occurs in November. I'm doing it in March and calling it MiNoWriMo. I've been trying to get myself to do this for a while - write a book that is - but with the day job and all, it's been all too easy to make excuses. I'm already busy. But now is my time. I can feel it in the wind and the creaking of my bones and... Carpe Diem and junk like that stuff.

"First the French horn and now a 50,000 word novel in a month? Sounds nuts. I always knew you were nuts, Mike."

Yes, it's nuts. But it's going to be crazy-bad fun, too.

As for 50,000 words this post is around 800 and it only took about 40 minutes to write. Here are some great novels that come in at around 50k.

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Mine's likely to come in longer. Unlike the hacks listed above, I have something to SAY, dammit. I kid.

Now: details.

Tomorrow is the day and I'm more than a bit nervous. I'm afraid that I put too much pressure on myself in general and it's been hard to let go of that in advance of this project. I'm really hoping that the sheer brute force involved in this style of noveling will help reject my natural tendency towards overbaked perfectionism and low self-esteem - not a winning combination. I want to do that, but we'll see how strong my tendencies really are.

Having said that: I really can't wait to start. I've been thinking about this book for a long time, and since I decided to give this self-crash-course in novel-writing a try, I've been tempted to just jump in and go. But I didn't. Got to protect the sanctity of the month.

So. A little about this book. The jumping off point for me was: What if a group of people got together and actually performed the Twin Paradox thought experiment in the real world? [You know, shoot one twin out into the cosmos and get him up near the ultimate speed limit - light - and since theoretically nothing can go faster than light, time (and length, by the way) has to change and so for the space twin time slows down and therefore he ends up younger than his Earthbound twin upon his return. Simple. Intuitive.] What would the result be and would the experiment answer more questions than expected? This led me to want to explore how - besides science - that we answer questions: religion, meditation, fact-finding, blind faith, informed faith, encyclopedias... so many gradations. Is there a better way answer questions? Would we even know what it was if we saw it? Tell me about your mother. So that's it. Nothing big - just psychoanalyze the world so to speak.

Another point - a big one: The book I write is unlikely to have much resemblance to what I mentioned above. Once characters get out of my head and onto the word-processor, they have a way of doing what they want despite my efforts otherwise. They become inconsistent, rebellious, surprising, lovesick, psychotic and generally... human. That said, I hope to maintain a modicum of control over the process. At least the Twin Paradox experiment will be in there. I know that. But how the characters will react? That's the fun.

On another note, I seem to be trying really hard to get a cold. It would be the first one in more than a year. Last night was pretty sucky, but so far I feel better today. So I'm going to take a lot of Emergen-C until the symptoms flee in abject humiliation. But if they persevere and get the better of me, I'll get on with the noveling in any case. Nothing like a deadline.

I'd like to thank everyone in advance of this for their unabashedly glowing well-wishes and creatively snarky comments. I hope to keep everyone updated periodically. If you guys don't hear from me, that's when you should send well-wishes and guilt-inducing tidings. I can do this, but can really imagine needing help.

If you can't do all that... at least wish me luck.

Mike

PS - Future updates are likely to be terse and possibly panicked. This is normal.

PPS - It's official. I typed this up this morning, but as of this posting I have a cold. So... one of my characters will too. See what I just did there? Art imitates life.