NaNo 2013

(Regular blogging, you say, Jen? How's that working out for you?)

NaNoWriMo starts in two days. Since this'll be my tenth one I can't not do it, but I have three reasonably major problems:

1. This November is going to be possibly my busiest November ever. Working full time, busy at least three evenings during the week and at least the first two weekends are going to be a complete loss writing-wise.
2. I have not even the slightest ghost of an idea. I don't have a character, a setting, a scene, an image. Nothing.
3. And, oh yeah, I don't have anywhere to live. I am dependent entirely on the kindness and generosity of people I don't really know that well, and it seems a little unfair to sit in said people's houses and swear at a laptop for hours on end while demanding use of their WiFi to obsessively update my word count like a weirdo.

Somehow I'm going to make this work, probably through lunchtime word wars, table-hogging in Starbucks, and hanging around the office for hours after I should have gone home. But I would feel a lot better if I had a starting point. I've gone into NaNo with no ideas before, and essentially one of two things happens.

Scenario one: I find a name generator, get myself about half a dozen names, then write some people with those names having a good-natured argument. This will then generate itself into an easy to write piece of irredeemable fluff which is neither bad enough to be embarrassed about nor good enough to ever show to another human being. It's not fun to talk about writing these, because as soon as you say, "Oh, it's about a girl who meets this guy at her friend's wedding..." you look at the person you're talking to and you can see the brain make a hasty exit out through the ears. Also, last time I did this, I ended up using the line, "What were you doing that needed the character of the egg?" followed by about ten pages about egg performance art. I don't need that.

Scenario two: I switch my brain off and just see what comes out of my fingers. What inevitably comes out of my fingers is a politically-motivated mystery, which would be fine if I had any clue whatsoever what the mystery was supposed to be. But I never do. If I try to think about it or plot something out, I somehow lose all ability to write anything. What I then end up with is 50,000 words of vagueness, all of which scream "AUTHOR HAS NO CLUE WHAT IS HAPPENING" and all of which is terrible. The last novel I wrote using this method had exactly two sentences I didn't hate when I read back over it.

I've vaguely considered a few times trying to rewrite the novel I started in 2009. I didn't get very far with it, but in the 15,000 or so words I did write, there was some stuff that I thought was good (it's pretty rare for me to think my stuff is good enough to be pleased about). Reading back over it, I still think that stuff is good, but I hate the plot and don't quite know how I would change it. I don't know if, during a time-crunched and homeless month, I want to put myself under the pressure of trying to write something I'd be proud of. Also, when I wrote the good stuff there was a certain inspiration in my life, and when it disappeared I was left with a massive creative block that lasted... well, ages, actually. Essentially, I don't want to write shit, nor do I want to screw up my good stuff by surrounding it with shit. So what to do?

I'm making the following rules for myself:
1. I am not allowed to write a plot-driven novel if I don't know what the plot is.
2. None of my characters are allowed to mysteriously appear in a location they shouldn't reasonably be and then be all enigmatic about how they got there for a page and a half.
3. Nobody is allowed to be known by eighteen different names for no apparent reason.
4. I am not allowed to go off on tangents about any of the following: eggs, yoghurt, flamingoes, foot injuries, body fascism, queuing, or the proper way to care for a pet reptile.
5. I need to somehow not make my entire novel about blues dance, despite the fact that it has EATEN MY SOUL.

So, this'll go well, then.