The month of November is known for many things. It’s the month
we give thanks to the Almighty God for all the things with which we’ve been
blessed. Then again, it’s also the month that, mere hours after we’ve offered those
humble oblations to the Most High and have eaten ourselves sick, we step over
each other in a greedy attempt to acquire the most things at the cheapest price
in the shortest amount of time for a holiday we’re supposed to be focusing on
the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.
November is also the month that men grow mustaches. I’m not
participating because I can’t grow enough facial hair above my lip to even look
like a 70s porn star, much less Tom Selleck.
I am, however, participating in the OTHER thing for which
the month of November is known.
National Novel Writing Month, or “NaNoWriMo” for short.
The concept is that participants write an entire 50,000-word
novel in exactly one month, starting as soon as Halloween has officially ended
(midnight on November 1), and finishing by 11:59 p.m. November 30.
Two years ago I attended an orientation meeting at the Idaho
Falls Public Library, but never participated. This year, I've run out of excuses.
Last weekend, my wife and I drove to Boise so I could
attend (for the third year in a row) the Idaho Book Extravaganza, a seminar for
published and aspiring authors in Idaho. I was sitting at a table with a
published author named Joanne Pence, and explained to her that I’ve been stuck for
countless hours trying to iron out the prologue of a fantasy novel of mine, and
I still haven’t finished ironing it out. (I’m an editor and a perfectionist,
and so my natural tendency is to write, then refine, then write, then refine,
rather than write, write, write, and refine later.)
She told me in no uncertain terms, “Don’t do that.” She then
said something so profound I should post on my wall. (A real wall, not a
Facebook wall, though I guess that would work too.) She said, “You
don’t know how a novel will begin until it ends.”
And so, with it being National Novel Writing Month, and with
the basics of an outline for this fantasy novel already in place, I’m writing
2,100 words per day. (I’m behind and I won’t write on Sundays). It sounds like a lot, but I've found if you can give yourself three 15-minute writing sessions a day, and if you can pound out 700 words all three times, you can do it. It doesn't have to sound good—yet. Even when I'm not pleased with how something came out, I'm still watching the plot move along and the protagonist is taking shape.
One thing I learned at IBE last weekend (among many—every year it’s like drinking from a fire
hose) was to NOT quietly work on your novel and then tell everyone about it
when it’s ready to launch, because then it’ll be DOA.
So here’s my synopsis:
In a nutshell, it’s “‘The Sacketts’ meets ‘The Dragonriders
of Pern.’”
The planet Elva revolves around its star in an elliptical orbit,
four times as slowly as our planet Earth around the sun. One end of the orbit is much closer than the other. That means that for
nearly three years out of every four, crops can be grown and people can
flourish. But for over a year, the planet experiences winter so heavily that
no living creature can survive without proper shelter. All year.
On this planet, humans from Earth settled when winter had
passed, and for nearly three years they prospered. And then winter came. And lingered. Thousands died. Only the most resourceful and the hardiest survived. When
the snows finally receded a year later, the decimated human population was
divided into clans. Clans started out as mere families and extended families,
but over the years the clans became corrupted. Greedy. Lazy. They annexed
lesser clans into their own and made them into lower class servants, bound to do the work none of the "royalty" wanted to do. As a result, a smaller number of large, powerful clans rose to the top.
And now one young serf is trying to break free and do what
no one has done for centuries. Start his own clan.
My novel is (tentatively) called, “The Chronicles of Elva:
Rebirth.”
I'll keep everyone posted on the progress of the novel.
