Shirt! And stress...

I got my NaNo t-shirt in the mail today! I really like it. BUT...I'm 6 months pregnant, and it's a bit tight around the belly already! I have no idea if I can wear it through November. I should have gotten an XL, but then I probably wouldn't wear it again after pregnancy. So I got L, but it looks a bit odd in the belly area, and shows off the weird drawstring waist on my maternity jeans too well! I think I'll have to buy some different jeans before I'll brave wearing this outside my house.

Meanwhile, we haven't even been in this house, or town, a month, and we're still living out of boxes. I'm due to have a baby in 14 weeks, or maybe even 10 given my history, and now my husband's interviewing for a job 3 hours away! So...you think I might be a little distracted during NaNo?! I'm beginning to think that if I do it, it will be a miracle.

NaNoFiMo

It occurred to me that what I really need is a National Novel Finishing Month. Because even though I finished my last NaNo novel and might also finish one this time around, I still have 2 other half-novels I really want to finish (okay, one 2/3-novel and one 1/3-novel, if you want to get picky). So I guess that would be NaNoFiMo, I thought. On a hunch, I googled it, and sure enough, NaNoFiMo exists! The only problem is...December? Not only may I be burnt out then, but it's the holidays, people. Shopping! Cards! Decorating! Planning! Three million (or so) end-of-semester and holiday projects & parties at my kids' school! So, I don't know if that'll work out for me, but it's still nice to know it exists, just in case.

Writers write, writers read

I haven't thought about my novel ideas today. I've been too busy shopping for baby stuff, shopping for random stuff (printer ink, envelopes, Halloween candy, blah blah blah), and nearly coughing my head off.

But here's my observation/advice for the day. I've noticed lots of people in the young adult forum on the NaNo boards asking what's appropriate in YA novels. Like, is this plot appropriate? Is this too much? What language can I use? Etc. And I keep thinking...the way to know the answers to these questions is to read YA novels. I'm not sure why anyone would want to write in a genre they don't read. I would be terrified to even try writing something I didn't read. But I hear these questions all the time about YA, not just on NaNo but in many online authors' groups, at local writing meetings, etc. Sometimes, the concerns I hear expressed could be put to rest simply by reading 2 or 3 current YA books. (Or sometimes, even 2 or 3 very old YA books!) Newbery winner Linda Sue Park actually suggests reading 1,000 books in your genre before writing in it. I think I probably have read more than 1,000 children's & YA novels, but I've had a (longish!) lifetime to do it. I would suggest reading at least a few current titles in any genre before writing in it. And that's my lecture for the day.... (And by the way, almost anything goes in YA these days!)

Oh, and I'm sure he's not reading this, but Happy Birthday to my brother...that is, my "baby" brother who's already past 30 now! Eeek! (Given our combined maturity level, I sent him a Garbage Pail Kids e-card.)

Double the madness

I've discovered that some people actually plan to write two novels in a month for NaNoWriMo, either by starting separate NaNo accounts to track the progress of each, or by simply finishing one early and then trying to write another, with the goal of getting their word count to 100K by the end of the month.

Please remind me that, just because I have 2 novel ideas, I do not need to do that! I am ever-so-slightly tempted to consider it, but I think it will be hard enough to write one with all my responsibilities right now. Though last time I did NaNo, I did finish early, and got so inspired by the actual writing that I ended up writing about 12,000 more words on two other projects during the month. So I certainly give myself permission to write more if I want to, but I don't want to give myself that expectation. And frankly, if I do finish one novel draft early, I'd probably rather finish my Purple Panic book than start another new novel. I've been thinking about Purple Panic a lot today, which was envisioned as an early chapter book and morphed into a midgrade. It got bogged down along the way, and I'm thinking of starting it all over as a chapter book again, or at the very least trying to pick up the pace.

Penguins

The Austin NaNoWriMo participants call themselves the Austin Penguins, and they try to work penguins into their NaNo novels. So, I've come up with ways to work penguins into both of my ideas.

If I write the story about Jessie, her high school mascot would be the Pendleton Penguins. It would be a much-mocked mascot, partly because penguins just aren't fierce, and partly because of the school colors. The school colors might be purple & gold--all wrong for penguins--and they'd be the Purple Penguins, which would look a bit ludicrous. Or, the colors would be red & black. In that case, the mascot would be black & white like normal, but because of the red in the school colors, people would jokingly refer to them as the Bloody Penguins. Or if I write the story about Lainie, she would have a collection of penguin items. At some point, she'd feel embarrassed about them, like they were too childlike, and pack them away, but eventually she'd realize they were part of her and bring at least one or two back out.

The problem? After coming up with these penguin ideas, I saw today that E. Lockhart's new YA novel The Boy Book is out, and it's got a penguin figurine on the cover. (The prequel, The Boyfriend List, had a frog figurine on the cover and they figured into the story.) So now penguin figurines may be considered derivative. Argh. I figure I'll still write it that way, if I go for that story, and then if it really ever gets close to being published (ha) and the penguins are a problem, I can change them to some other kind of figurine.

Oh, I also work beets into all my longer fiction, because the novel I started in 2000 (and have still never finished, despite having it all plotted out!) has a lot to do with beets. So, beets have got to make it in somewhere, though it's pretty easy to work a food in.

New inspiration

I attended a writing conference this weekend, which was great timing as it gave me inspiration for NaNoWriMo! Different things the speakers said sparked several questions in my head about my plot ideas and characters, and near the end of the conference I ended up writing 3 pages of notes about my 2 ideas. Since I got home, the ideas have continued spinning around in my mind, so I know a lot more about each story now than I did before the conference. Yes!

Not that I'm any more sure what to write! One of the stories, tentatively titled This is the End, features Jessie, a high school junior who writes lyrics for a garage band. I started to question this because the novel I meant to write for NaNoWriMo in 2003 but never really started (Generic Girl 7309) was about a 7th grader who makes a name for herself when she performs an original song at her school talent show. I still want to write that book someday, and thought, "I can't have 2 books about songwriters, can I?" So I started thinking...maybe that is Jessie's back story. Maybe this new book is the sequel to that book that hasn't even been written. Maybe that experience was how she even got to know the people in the band... And then I realized I have yet another barely-started story in my files in which a girl writes a poem. I didn't really have much plot for that one, and I thought, hey, maybe the quirky friend character from that story could be Jessie's best friend in this one, and I could combine all 3 stories into one, blah blah blah. Well, it doesn't really work. If I combine the Generic Girl story into this one, I'll never get to write all the stuff I came up with for that one. But if I still want to write that one sometime, this shouldn't be its sequel, because that's meant to be a light story with an upbeat ending, and this one isn't. This one may be a downer. I expect it would have a hopeful, forward-looking ending, but meanwhile Jessie will be facing a death and difficult relationships, and no one would want to read the Generic Girl story and then found out this is what she had to go through in the future!

So then I have another story, which has no working title. I've only thought of it as Lainie and Jill, since it's about sisters named Lainie and Jill. I changed my title several times during the last NaNoWriMo I completed, but I'm still loath to start without a good working title. Yesterday I thought of the title The Year I Became My Sister, which I like but it's not exactly accurate. It's more like The Year I Tried to Become My Sister, but that's too wordy! Anyway, I had a lot of ideas for this story yesterday. Although the other story appeals to me more, this one seems more ready to start. Lainie has a strong voice in my head, and it's a fast one, so I honestly think the story would flow out faster. She also seems more active in my mind than Jessie at this point, quicker to act to pursue what she wants, so that would also help the plot flow. But I'm not sure she's someone readers would want to spend time with! I fear she'll come across as annoying, or too naive. Also, I had only a basic premise until Saturday, with no other characters besides the two sisters and their parents. Now, I at least have some ideas about where the story could go, and what sorts of things could be at stake. However, the story deals with teen pregnancy (on the surface, though the pregnancy isn't the underlying issue), and if this were to become a polished novel, I'm not sure I'd want my first published novel to be about teen pregnancy! It's not much like other things I'd write, and I'm not sure it's how I'd want to be pegged. But then, if I am going to write about pregnancy, might as well do it while I'm pregnant and remember what it's like! (I expect this to be my last child.)

So, we'll see what I actually do when November rolls around. One problem: you are supposed to start NaNoWriMo novels from scratch on November 1, with no pre-written prose whatsoever. You can have an outline, and notes, and character sketches, but no actual text from the story. But I already have first lines for both of these. Good ones that I don't want to change! My guess is, I'll just start from scratch with different opening lines and add the old ones back in during revisions, but they are such good starting points for me, I think I'll find it hard to start with any other lines.