NaNoWri…Oh crap.

My November is off to a resounding silence. I had such great plans for why my NaNoWriMowas going to be a success this year (see last post). As it turns out, none of those reasons were worth anything.

My goal to tackle the novel I didn’t write last year has been significantly derailed by opportunities with deadlines. So I should (and will) just write those instead, right? Well, I started to do that, but realized the story I was working on didn’t quite fit with the dark-sf/f theme of the opportunity, so I abandoned that project the same way I abandoned my novel.

Then I realized that I should just write on my novel while I let another darker idea brew in my head. So, of course, the moment I focused on the novel again, dark story ideas rained down upon me. At first I was thinking of a spaceship-based locked room scenario, though the plot was slow in forming. So I figured I should watch a dark locked-room spaceship movie to help jiggle some ideas loose. I watched Life. Best film I’ve seen in that genre since Aliens…but it convinced me that I shouldn’t write such a story because I’d only end up copycatting.

But mu mind was rolling and I just hand-wrote a two page outline for a story idea that I am very excited about. It’s dark, convoluted, and weird — exactly the stuff I was looking for. Unfortunately it may also be a novel rather than a short story/novelette as my opportunity’s word limit requires. Ugh.

But at least this means I have something to write now. Better a late WriMo than a never WriMo, right? Alas, day job requirements will have me tied up most of tomorrow, and likely a lot more over the next week or two. Still, I have a new nowhere-near-50k-word goal of finishing the first draft of this story by the end of the month. When life gives you lemons, write a dark time travel story for a themed anthology.