NaNoWriMo 2011

For those who don't know "NaNoWriMo" is National Novel Writing Month, a yearly challange to writers, professional and amateur alike, to write 50,000 words of a novel within the month of November.  (That works out to roughly a 300 page novel, I believe.)  The official Nanowrimo website is www.nanowrimo.org, where writers can create a profile with a plot synopsis, keep track of each others' word count, and interact on a forum.  This month, I'm participating... sort of.



I didn't intend to at first, but some others were doing it and they got me all excited about it.  I jumped in a week late, and decided I wouldn't aim for the 50,000 goal, but just write a little each day and enjoy being part of it all.  It's an interesting experience because, in the past, I've had most of the plot worked out before writing.  This time, I know the beginning, and I sort of know the climax.  Everything in-between is awfully fuzzy.  It's kind of worrisome, really.  I keep expecting to hit a moment where I say, "I have no idea what happens next!" and then, I don't know, the world will end or something.

My novel is a sci-fi about settlers on an alien planet who become enslaved to the natives.  The heroin joins a group of runaways turned freedom fighters who run around being a giant nuisance to the aliens.  Hopefully it will be a fun, adventurous story.  To make things more interesting, though, I want to make things a little more ambiguous than just "the humans are good and the aliens are bad," and maybe play around with the idea that there are good and bad people on both sides, and sometimes it's hard to figure out just who's right and who's wrong.  My initial inspiration for the story was the thought of, "What would it be like if there was someone you revered as a hero, and then after getting to know them, found out they weren't who you thought they were?"  So the heroin is going to join this group of freedom fighters, idolize the leader, and then realize he's not always worth idolizing.

I'm finding that the hardest part of writing this is that it's supposed to be set on a futuristic alien planet, and I'm having a very hard time envisioning that world.  I'm constantly asking myself random questions like, "Do the doors have doorknobs?  Does it matter whether or not they have doorknobs or something else?  Do they swing out like our doors do, or do they slide into the wall like in Star Trek?"  I have no idea.  It's really annoying.

And why do all of the doors slide in all the sci-fi shows, anyway?  What if there was some kind of electrical or programming glitch?  "Why won't the doors open?"  "Oh, sorry, the ships computer got the blue screen of death.  We can't open or close any doors until someone hits ctl+alt+delete and reboots it."  "Oh man!  This is bad!  I need this door open right now!"  "Why?"  "I gotta go to the bathroom!"

On that note, I'll be on my way.  To those of you also nano-ing, good luck and happy writing!