Today may be Halloween, but tomorrow is the start of NaNoWriMo, and I personally get more excited about that!
As some of you may recall, I spent last year trying to get the setting of the “motorcycle game” into a full-on book form. I made some progress, but I ultimately stalled. And while I’d like to get back to that project, it’s going to require a lot more new ideas than I’d originally anticipated. I’d still like to get that turned into a book at some future point, but I think I may have to rework some fundamental aspects of that world if I want to make it into something commercially-viable.
So this year, I’m starting over with a different project.
A few months back, I spoke to some friends who are professional writers in one capacity or another about getting my toe in that pond. One of the folks I spent some time chatting with was Kyle Rudge of Geekdom House and Mythos and Ink fame. (We’ve had Kyle on the podcast twice. We spoke to him the first time in episode 68 and more recently in episode 153.)
One of the things that Kyle encouraged/challenged me to do was to start writing a book. Not a setting book, but something based much more directly off the experience of being part of Saving the Game for all this time. A nonfiction work.
That conversation has been sitting there like an itch in my brain ever since. I didn’t know exactly what I’d write or how I’d write it, but the memory sat there, poking at me. Not enough to be annoying, but never far from the forefront of my mind, either. Until a few weeks ago when something finally clicked.
I was sitting at work on a very slow day with nothing to do, and I decided to open up a Google Doc and see if I could start getting a skeleton down. Four basic categories turned into over 8 pages of outline spanning 10 chapters of material over the course of a slow afternoon. It took me over 2 hours to transfer it all into Scrivener.
I also compiled a research list of things to reference. Books, articles, podcasts, even a couple of movies and a musical track.
This project is way more than I can finish in a month, but it’s not more than I can start in a month, and 50,000 words of progress would definitely be a good starting point. I also feel like this new project is more important than the previous one.
So wish me luck, pray for me if you’re so inclined and share what you’re doing in the comments below, on our social media, or in the Discord. I love NaNoWriMo, and I’m anxious to get started.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
