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An update on my novel

The month of November is going to be busy for me.  As I stated in an earlier post, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, an event whereby people from around the globe make an attempt to write a novel with a minimum of 50,000 words in 30 days.

The rules are minimal.  You commence writing on November 1st, and feed your novel into a word-count tool at the end of the month to determine whether you were successful.   The emphasis is on completing a rough draft within the time limit, not on creating a polished, edited, finished novel.

Advance preparation of an outline, research, and character sketches are allowed, so that's how I'm occupying my time prior to the November 1st starting date.  My own approach is to use my chapter outline to determine where I start writing on any given day.  If I'm stuck on one chapter, I'll start on another and come back to my sticking point later.

After the contest is over I'll spend another two months editing and polishing, so my actual time spent on getting the novel ready for publication will be three months.

It is a science fiction murder mystery.  It will be set on an artificial planet on the edge of the asteroid belt.  It's somewhat formulaic (drawing from common features of both sci-fi and mystery), but then again anything I hammer out in 30 days, and 50,000 words, would have to have a tightly  limited number of subplots and a simple main narrative.

As part of my research I've been reading two books.

The first is The Writer's Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe by George Ochoa and Jeffrey Osier.  The book is a guide to avoiding bad science in constructing the setting and technology for sci-fi stories and novels.  Written science fiction is speculative, so skirting the edges of plausibility is allowable to some extent.  But I'm going to try to keep the details of the story as believable and scientifically realistic as possible.

The second book I've been reading is Writing Mysteries, edited by Sue Grafton. It's a series of article on the craft of mystery writing, by Sara Paretsky, Tony Hillerman, and a number of other writers.

My plan is to work on the research, outline, and character sketches up to October 31st, then hit the ground running with the novel itself starting on the first day of November.

A 50,000 word novel in a month

Since I'm a person of many interests, cursed with a somewhat short attention span, deadlines are good for me.  Publicly announcing my deadline on a particular project is even better, since it creates accountablility, even if embarrassment is the only consequence.

After considering several post-retirement careers,  I've settled on writing.  It's something I've always enjoyed, and it doesn't take a lot of motivation for me to sit at the keyboard and write.  Doing it in a focused and disciplined manner has been my main challenge.  I've been submitting short stories to publications regularly over the past few months, have been ruminating on several ideas for novels, and have even written a few chapters of two of those novels.

But I needed something to jolt me into creating a complete first draft of a novel.  I found an event that fits the bill.

David Seah wrote a post on his  blog entitled National Novel Writing Month 2012.  It described a yearly international event whereby aspiring writers encourage  and pressure fellow participants to write the rough draft of a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.  Since November is fast approaching, and I've made a committment to myself to write daily anyhow, I decided to take the plunge, and officially enter the event.

If you are an aspiring novelist, and need something to focus your effort, and create a structured deadline for yourself, this may be the event for you.  The official site is  http://www.nanowrimo.org.

So stop fantasizing about that novel, and start writing.  I intend to do short progess reports on my own effort through the month of November.

Tour of Sylvester Cemetery -- October 6,2012 11 AM

Historic Sylvester Cemetery is the final resting place of many of the pioneering families of Atlanta, and the resting place of the founders of East Atlanta Village in particular.

I'll be conducting a tour of this beautiful and historic cemetery on Saturday October 16, 2012 at 11 AM.  It will begin at the intersection of Nash Avenue and Braeburn Circle (map included below)

There will be a 10 per person donation collected to benefit the cleanup of the cemetery.

I'll talk about the history of East Atlanta and southwest Dekalb County, and the role of individuals and families buried in the cemetery in its history.

If you have questions email me at larryfeltonjohnson@gmail.com or phone me at 404-664-2034.

 

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