Once again I’m participating in NaNoWriMo, and once again I’m hoping to do better than the years before. Last year was my most promising start as I banged out close to 10,000 words in just a couple of nights. Unfortunately life took over as it always seems to and the writing fell off to the wayside. I started NaNo the very first year that I sort of had a creative falling out as it were. The hope was that it might rekindle the writing flame. Unfortunately it hasn’t panned out. I’m not blaming NaNo here, but the last several years my life had gone through so many changes, both good and bad, that everything was just spinning and it was hard to find any focus.
Over the past several months the writing bug has come back and I’ve been acting on it. Right now, the fact that I’m staying at home cleaning and fixing up the place as actually helped. When any kind of inspiration hits me it’s a lot easier to just put down what I’m doing (or finish it up) and grab a little bit of writing time. I’ve had lots of mini ideas, but nothing really full blown. Still, even when I used to write frequent that was true. I have many many files of unfinished stories. I go through them sometimes for inspiration.
About a month ago when Zombieland came out in the theaters we went to see it. One of our friends had a Zombie novel with him and that gave me a chuckle. I know there are a lot of horror themed novels out there – a great deal of them focus on vampires (most emasculated ones) and werewolves. Then there’s all your other creepy horror. I knew there were a couple novels that centered on zombies out there, but I didn’t realize that like the more popular vampires and werewolves it was becoming a genre in its own right. Denise quipped that I should write a zombie novel as I am a huge fan of pretty much every zombie movie no matter how horrible it is. I laughed. Though over the next couple days the suggestion bounced around in my brain and I began to jot down a lot of notes. It wasn’t long before a full fledged idea was in place. Right before NaNo is to begin. Sometimes these things just come together.
In a couple days NaNo will kick off and I think this time I have a good shot at hitting the 50,000 word mark – and quite likely beyond that. I’d have to say that a full fledged novel in this genre will probably weigh in around the 80,000 word mark which is getting close to twice what you need to “win” NaNo. It’s not inconceivable to manage this in a month. It just means it’ll take even longer before I get around to finishing up cleaning the basement. Of course this sounds like the proverbial win-win scenario to me.
Just a Man with a Mash Paddle 