0 Final Countdown.

NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow.

Being the incredibly obsessed dork I am, I'll be starting this evening at 12:00:01AM, sharp. I've got nothing written as far as plot goes, and my characters are merely an assortment of dialogue snippets. The following is my description of my NaNo novel at 1AM last night.

As of this very moment, this story is:

• An adapted compilation of fairy tales,
• Set in a never-ending forest,
• Containing nine confused and confusing characters,
• A variety of enemies who remain undefeated,
• And a young, impertinent Author that lies at the end of the rainbow.

Just for the record, I don't know where this idea came from, nor do I have a clue where the hell it's going.

This should be interesting.

And so it shall. I've successfully gathered an army (consisting of two or three friends and my brother) which whom to struggle for the next 30 days of my life.

50,000 words, people.

As fellow NaNo-er Lindsey encouraged this morning, "giddyup".

0 Crazy.

I'm not really sure what the relevance of this post is, but I read something lately that claimed that the majority of top-notch artists (whether it be poets, musicians, painters, or even authors) were (or are) rather crazy. I wasn't sure what to think at first, but then I started looking at exceptional artists in history (Sylvia Plath, Mozart, Van Gogh, and Edgar Allen Poe, to name a few). As many know, all of those aforementioned artists experienced some period(s) of insanity. I've been thinking quite a bit about this, so I'm going to give it an honorable mention on my blog. Excuse the irrelevancy of it to NaNoWriMo. (Although, I have been experiencing a bit of a dry spot as far as inspiration goes, so at least this is forcing me to write something; so, in a way, it's not really a waste of time.)

Long ago, when I was very little, I decided that what I think and what I write are in no way suitable topics for dinner conversation. Perhaps you've had something along the same lines happen to you before?

"What were you doing up there?

"Oh, I was just writing."

"About what?"

"I started a story about a girl having cancer. She dies at the end and it makes me kinda sad, 'cause I just started to like her. But she has to die anyway, of course."

(shaking head and walking away) "Not right. Strange cookie, you are. Straaange cookie."

It didn't take me long to figure out what I was and wasn't supposed to tell others. Perhaps this is why I haven't really spoken about my stories to other people--besides to my best friend, who is, coincidentally, nearly as mental as I am. But I haven't been talking to her quite as often either. And I've begun to notice that if I don't talk about things to people, I start talking to myself about them; and when that happens, the characters and plot lines begin to mix and haunt me in my dreams...and in reality.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, despite the fact that I'm not an "exceptional artist" or anything, I believe that I may be a little crazy. I think maybe all of us are, but writers, and other people who express themselves by means of creating things, have a special place in the figurative psychiatric clinic.

0 Imaginary Friends.

In my personal (unedumacated) opinion, I believe the making of a story's characters is the most difficult part of the story development. I can somewhat easily fill out a plot line--complete with structure, details, and thematic threads (of course, after I've dodged and filled in the gaping plot holes)--but one thing I find myself near incapable of doing is creating characters. Especially creating them on demand, like I need to for story plots. More specifically, like I need to do for NaNoWriMo.

It is a rare occasion indeed when I develop a character before the story timeline; more often the timeline comes first, and then after mulling over the ideas and central themes for a while, characters start popping up--both in my dreams and imaginative state, and also in the real world. I find that each of my characters is like an imaginary person whom you encounter, and either develop a friendship with, or entirely despise, etc. If I should happen to like them, I keep them as my friend and call them my own. (Hang on, you mean your self-creating, "pretend" friends don't visit you when you happen to be studying at the library? or ride a bike beside you? or converse with you on the topic of spiritual enlightenment? No? How odd.)

Anyway, getting more to the point of this ramble (for which I am guilty for not including more important information, and yet am strangely glad to have filled a post with meaningless material). I have been designing characters for my upcoming NaNo novel, Zel, and I've so far developed 9 characters. Eight of them are of my own invention (with the help of previously present fairy and folk tales which have lingered in memory for centuries) but my dear friend, Aileen, helped me develop the ninth character who simply put the icing on the cake.

Over the next week or so, I'll be working on linguistic and personality differences between the characters, so I can distinguish them automatically when I write.

In other news, the Blood Moon will be full this Friday night, and Samhain isn't even two weeks away, so I'll be quite busy preparing for that.

Despite this, I'll plod forward in my quest to--for once--be ready for NaNoWriMo this year!

0 Looking Back, Looking Ahead.

Welcome, I guess. In order to stay on track with NaNoWriMo this year (so that I'm not rushing to write thirty-five thousand words in six days, like last year), I've decided to dedicate an entire blog to this November's competition. With luck such as mine, I'll probably end up writing more words on this blog than in my novel, and then still get stuck with half of the 50k to write in virtually two days.

But hey. It was a good idea at the time.

Although it's still rather early in October, I figured it would make more sense to start the blog now, rather than November 1st, so I'm not distracted with the layout during the novel-writing month. That was an utter disaster last year.

I'll just change the font size. Oh no, the page got smaller. Wait, is that an advertisement in the middle of my post? Why the heck is my title so huge! Are those commas too big? I don't like the design. I'll change that, too. Wait, the background is tilted, like it's on crack or something. Holy CRAP, why is there a horse in my layout; it was supposed to be a SUNSET. OMG, I @#$%^&*#% NEED MORE COFFEE. -implosion-

Disastrous. Really.

Hopefully, I'll be able both to keep this posted (to get the juices flowing) and to write the novel (to make the lemonade) at the same time. Wish me luck.

P.S. If you're pondering the reason for the title...well, don't overexert yourself. It's just based on a sort of philosophy I have adopted: "Some people say I think outside the box. But as far as I'm concerned, there is no box." It suits me.