The smell of fall is in the air, the weather is turning colder, there’s snow on the mountain tops . . . must mean it’s time for Nanowrimo.

I’ll be participating this year. This will be my fourth year NaNoing: both Chiaroscuro and Something Beautiful’s rough drafts were NaNoWriMo projects. My first year was a fanfic novel that is still unfinished. (Which is, believe me, for the best.) Last year I did not because I had a deadline in December and didn’t feel I could do both and give either the attention they deserved. But this year . . . ah, this year :D. I have plans. I have a few different plots to choose from for when it’s time to sit and write. I’m so excited. (Really, this is me excited.)

I just cleared out my buddy list at the NaNoWriMo site of names I don’t recognize so if I need to add you back give me a pokin’. I am minorblue (though that may change if they implement the renaming thing they hinted at last year. Or not. I’m easily bored–I change names a lot.) And I will happily accept new NaNoBuddies, because it’s just more fun that way.

I may be doing another Thing in tandem with NaNoWriMo, but that’s still a decision I need to make. So more on that later. Or not.

The t-shirt they have for this year, celebrating NaNoWriMo’s tenth anniversary, is pretty nifty, too. I love commemorative t-shirts.

Current Mood:  calm

Angela Bendetti has a post about wanting the Shiny New Idea Joy, and whoo boy, do I hear that.

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Current Mood:  contemplative

I like t-shirts, and I’ve been wanting to do some book-related t-shirts for a while. But I’ve wanted to so something a little . . . off the beaten path, maybe?

Those of you who’ve read Chiaroscuro know a lot of the action takes place in the Gallagher family bakery, so the plan is to make some schwag with a Gallaghers’ Bakery logo: at the very least a barbecue apron, mostly because it both amuses me and feels very appropriate.

I’m still playing with designs, and a few of my ideas are below the cut. Click on the thumbnail to see the design in full. I plan to have the store open by the time Something Beautiful comes out on the 25th.

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I’ve been invited to participate in my first anthology. I’m thrilled to pieces. More on that as it happens!

March: Cartography for Beginners rough draft. STATUS: Well . . . I got about 10,000 words into the rough draft and then it all petered out.

April-May: the movie rough draft. STATUS: Still planning on this. I’ve decided to participate in Script Frenzy for inspiration. I have a file box full of primary and secondary sources and more that I need to print out. I have an outline broken down sequences and scenes. I even have some freeware screenwriting software that’s actually quite nifty and helpful.

. . . I’m utterly terrified. BUT. We carry on.

June-July: Arcana rough and editing. STATUS: Will probably start this in May . . .

August-Sept-October: Editing Cartography for Beginners STATUS: if I’m not attempting to keep writing this instead.

Either way, the Arcana is due in August, so writing of it will take place before then.

November: Nanowrimo (next SF ‘verse story) STATUS: Well, I know which story I want to to do . . .

December: REST!!! maybe write some fic. STATUS: YES.

. . . is what I’ve been calling my plans for the year. The big list of next looks like this:

March: Cartography for Beginners rough draft.
April-May: the movie rough draft
June-July: Arcana rough and editing
August-Sept-October: Editing Cartography for Beginners
November: Nanowrimo (next SF ‘verse story)
December: REST!!! maybe write some fic.

Though I’m considering writing the Arcana in March and saving the next novel for the summer, but I’m not sure at the moment. What project I will begin tomorrow will depend on which one feels the most ready, and I may surprise myself entirely and decide to start the movie instead. (Unlikely, really, though I got some more material and a good idea from my partner this morning that makes me itch to get this thing going.)

And between all of this there’s editing to be done for the new releases, and maybe some shorts, too. (And the day job and what passes for a social life and all the household things . . .)

I am starting something tomorrow. Don’t know what yet, at the moment. But there will be something.

A brief list of everything I need/want to write in the next few months:

• a birthstone story
• an Arcana
• the next story in the SF series
• a contemporary fantasy type thing
• a single shot about a long-time couple reconnecting
• a yaoi-inspired thing

And that’s not even counting the movie. Yeek.

Sometime in the next year, I’m going to be writing a spec script for a biopic. I’m very excited to do this: the subject is fascinating, the time period is interesting, and the story is worth telling. This wasn’t my idea: I was approached to collaborate by someone who specializes in this subject. (My specialization in college was the Romantics. I have a bookcase full of books on Jane Austen and the Brontes. And yet I’ve never wanted to write Regencies. Hm.) But my partner’s an historian and didn’t feel she could write a story, while I’m a storyteller and worry about how to write history.

Writing a biography is a new challenge. Lives don’t wrap up neatly like novels do. My first question when I get down to serious plotting is what’s the throughline, what’s the arc, what’s the journey this character goes on? But people’s lives don’t work like that, generally. I mean, if you were to map your life according to the hero’s journey model, would it work out? (Maybe if you stretched . . .) So when I tell this man’s story, when I fit his life into history . . . I’m not quite sure how.

I’m not quite sure how to structure it, either. Does the story start with his parents, with his birth, or later? Do I frame it within flashbacks or just go straight through chronologically? Do I end it with his death, or earlier? (Or even later?)

One of my favorite books is Slaughterhouse-Five—”Billy Pilgrim has come unstruck from time” is one of my favorite opening lines ever—and something my teacher pointed out when we read it in high school is that while Billy jumps around to various points in his life, his experience in World War II is strictly chronological. I’m thinking that might be a structure to follow, that his experience in war time is what his life built towards before and changed everything afterwards.

I’m nervous about this, but excited. I’m not looking to even start writing until February or so but I’ve already got this man under my skin. (I’m trying to keep some professional detachment, though it’s not easy: he’s exactly the personality type I find irresistible. But I read something this morning in a film review that I’m going to hang over my desk when I’m writing: “Biography should challenge, not sanctify.”)

Wish me luck.