National Crazy Month

I already wrote a post with NaNoWriMo in the title so I thought I'd address the reality of this endeavour by calling it like it is: crazy.  A 50k (at minimum) novel in 30 days?  Yes, I think everyone involved in the project considers it crazy.

What's crazier is my declaration of my participation in public.  It means that I have to come up with SOMETHING in November, or risk shaming myself for not at least attempting the challenge.  And yet here I am - so please put the public shaming on hold for at least a couple of months.  Please?

Right, so here is the very brief synopsis of the story I will be writing from November 1-30:

Larry is just trying to get through high school with as few bruises as possible when he finds an old pocketwatch that allows him to travel through time. He uses the it to climb the rungs of the social ladder - until he witnesses his future self being expelled after pulling off a seemingly innocent prank. Will Larry suffer the consequences of meddling with time, or will he fix everything before he ruins his future?

Larry is honestly a temporary name, but as I wrote in my notes, it's growing on me due to having (re-)watched The Big Lebowski recently.  I don't even have a title for this thing, but that's really not important.  I bet it has something to do with the word "time".  Maybe I'll go a different direction entirely and call it "The Pocketwatch".  Actually, I rather like "The Pocketwatch".  Maybe I should use that as a working title.

And here is where I declare my intentions.  Emphasis on the word "intentions", because what I intend to do and what I actually do will be different things indeed.

I intend to:

• Write 2,000 words per day.  This will equate to 60,000 words in total, and is above the recommended 1,667 words per day that totals up to about 50k.
• Post an edited excerpt of the novel on December 1st on this blog
• Do a one-pass edit to make sure the story works and cut out word padding (which will happen, for sure), terrible writing (also inevitable), etc.
• Do one more edit for grammar and spelling.  I expect most of the spelling to be caught by spell-check, but I doubt the grammar will be 100%.
• Do one of A) shop it around to an e-publisher or B) self-publish.

The reason I say 'e-publisher' is because that way I don't have to spend money printing and mailing manuscripts.  Public shaming only applies if I don't complete the novel & edit, not the publishing bit.  Just FYI.  Well maybe just the novel completion bit, I mean editing is a lot more daunting than writing.

I think that settles everything.  Looking forward to November!