NaNoWriMo, Ready or Not!

          That month of frenzied, maniacal writing is almost upon us. Next Sunday marks the first day of November and the beginning of the mad rush to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Will you be joining Kitty, Shonna and me as we race toward the finish line? If so, we hope you’ll come by and be encouraged by what we’ll be sharing throughout the month. If you don’t plan to participate in NaNoWriMo, there will still be thoughts, encouragement and instruction available for you. Our posts and the guest blogs we have planned are sure to be helpful whether you are writing non-stop frenzied-style or merely starting a new project or developing an ongoing one.

          This year for NaNoWriMo I plan to rewrite a project that has haunted me for a decade or more. I write some, put it aside, come back and write some more, stop working on it until is lures me back into the story only to set it aside when I reach another impasse. This meandering way of writing has produced an octopus that needs taming! The characters have one motivation in one area of the manuscript and a totally different one in another area. The plot wanders all over the place. Lots of interesting things are happening to fascinating people, but it really isn’t a story. It’s a 800 page monstrosity.

          During the past couple weeks, I’ve been attempting to pull together a plot that will serve as a map as I write this year’s NaNoNovel. I’m having limited success. As usual, I get more of the plot by working with the characters. Even so, Come November, I may have to fall back on my tried and true method of discovering some of the missing parts by just writing. (Not really a big surprise to anyone who knows me.)

          One thing I am focusing on, though, is obtaining a firm grasp of each character’s story. As I told you last week, as I write a short paragraph or two detailing the known events from each character’s viewpoint, the entire story comes into sharper focus. I’ll be continuing that work this week. (During two, count them, two days spent at the coffee house.)

          I will also be experimenting with a literary technique that I only recently discovered. Chiastic structure. . Also called inverted parallelism, it is a reversal of structures to emphasize an overarching point. If you read the wikipedia explanation of it, you may come away more confused than enlightened. The easiest way I know to explain it is by example. The quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” and “Don’t live to eat; eat to live,” are simple chiastic structures. This is what I will attempt to create for each of my characters, a chiastic theme sentence.

          Although I haven’t given it much thought, a possible example for my hero and heroine comes to mind. My heroine believes anyone able to work magic is selfish and uncaring, most likely even cruel. My hero, a powerful mage, must prove otherwise to her. He will be trying to convince my heroine that “magic does not create the relationship; the relationship creates the magic.

          I’m still mulling over this and several other possibilities. This week I plan to spend two days (Yes! Two! Yay!) at the coffee shop preparing for NaNo. Come Nov 1st I hope to be ready to madly throw words through the keyboard that will create a coherent, magical, fascinating storyline for my hero and heroine.

          Care to join me?