NaNoWriMo: Going for it

I got to know about the project last year as I was just setting up my blog when the Scarfer wrote and later won the challenge in 2004. It was a bit too late for me to register and participate so I thought I’d give it a try this time about just for fun though I have doubts if I could reach the 50,000 words needed to be successfully deemed completed within the time frame of a month due to commitments like lab work, girl friend and others. Truthfully I don’t consider myself a novelist, at times I don’t even know if I’m capable of setting out a story through its myriad plots and twists, creating memorable characters that people come to empathize with and connect to, give a rapt flow of ideas that will keep the reader turning page by page or generating something that will be on the next New York Times bestseller’s list. But, those are not my goals though it would be nice if at least some of them are fulfilled, just getting through and making something that is readable would be the minimal satisfactory level that I’m targeting for now.

Why write? I can’t really say. Maybe it’s just the fun fleshing out a world created from your own fertile imagination, to populate it with denizens of your own making and then determine its course - who lives, who dies, who triumphs, who are vanquished, in short Godlike. The canvas for a writer is limitless, hemmed in only by the narrowness of your mind or expansive without horizons if you will it. The other reason is the challenge, not with other participants; this is not a contest after all, but to oneself. To see if I’ve what it takes to complete something requiring you to spend an innumerable amount of time and dedication to finish. Maybe I’ve always longed to write something to call my own. Lastly it’s the fun factor, just letting yourself go wild and write and enjoying it in the process, no worries that a publisher is heckling you to finish your dateline, no worries if the next book you write will cover your paycheck to live on, no worries of writers block.

So after the commitment, comes planning. What to write? What genre to use? Who will be in it? What setting do I wish to place them? What outcome do I wish to beset this new world? After thinking it over I decided to set myself on the path of a fantasy novel. Why? Because it is a genre I am familiar with, exposed from the various fiction novels that I’ve read, inspired by the likes of Tolkein, R.A. Salvatore, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, Rowling, Garth Nix and many more. The fantasy universe offers a world unrestrained by known reality, a world of infinite possibilities and probabilities, of creatures exotic and alien. Of course writing fantasy settings may also have its own pitfalls, making a world both believable and acceptable to the audience as well as to come out with an original setting and storyline unblemished by works already published by well known authors. It does not help if people say your writing resembles so and so’s work like, “Hey look that elf is so alike Legolas” or “Heck, the story reads like it was taken out from a Forgotten Realms setting”. Thus originality and substance are two things that needs to be addressed if one writing fantasy wishes to succeed, a prerequisite that I hope I am able to achieve.

I’ve already have a rough storyboard drawn up and like the rules, I’m waiting to flesh these rough drafts out in the full as the months go by. Till now I'm just winging it, nothing really solid has popped into my mind and I'm juggling concepts, characters, plots and other mundane stuff. I hope I will be able to at least accomplish something but if not then nothing much to it yeah, its all about the fun of writing and trying. Who knows one day my kids or kid's kid will stumble onto a wel molded manuscript hidden behind some junk and slowly unveils a new facinating world, if only. Wish me luck.