Crossing the Rubicon

I decided to join the National Novel Writing Month, which started today. It's an organization designed to kick authors like me in the butt to get writing. Basically, it runs through the month of November, and writers who sign up get 30 days to pump out a 50,000 word novel.

Obviously, 30 days isn't long enough to thoroughly research, revise, and edit a novel, even one that short. The idea is to just put your imagination and creativity into overdrive and just write. The actual quality of the novel is secondary. This made me a bit nervous when I was thinking about joining. It seemed to me like it glorified hack writing. But, in the end, I decided that I'd try and see what a deadline does to motivate me. If nothing else, by the end of this month, I should have a very rough first draft.

The story I decided to go with for this is one I've been kicking around for a while. I'm calling it Mage War. In essence, it picks up right where "Where Do We Go From Here" left off. That short story ended with Dr. Darrell Edwards III making a presentation at a scientific conference. Mage War starts off a few hours after the conference, with Darrell and his friends watching the fallout from his conference and deciding their next steps. I've had a vague outline in my head for a while of what I want to do with the story, but I haven't really written anything yet. So I thought that this would be a good novel to write this month.

I signed up today, and as it'll be midnight in 5 minutes, that'll give me 29 days to get going on this novel. The timing is a bit annoying, since I'm still taking classes this month, but if I hold off, I'll have to wait till next year to try again. No time like the present. Maybe the added constraint of balancing this with my schoolwork will motivate me more.

-E. Maxfield Moen