2008 NaNoWriMo Is a Wrap.

On Thanksgiving Day I completed the 2008 NaNoWriMo Challenge! Thanksgiving was special for me this year. We had my grandmother down, who just turned 90 in September, I just got a new job, my son’s high school football team made it to State, and I completed (and this is the real biggie) National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). “Wooooohhhhooooo!”

As you can see from below, completing NaNoWriMo was one of my 2008 writing goals and I am pretty stoked about pulling it off. NaNoWriMo is a big deal. The objective is to basically write a book in 30 days (50,000 words are required to win) – and November of all months too! It doesn’t cost anything, there is no big prize at the end, and no one calls you, but the reward is in knowing you did it – you wrote an entire novel in a month. My novel was 52, 201 words.

My novel is called ‘The Ring’. I really don’t like that title and if I actually do submit it to a publisher, I’ll probably rename it. When you hear the title, you think of the spooking Japanese/American movie by the same name – I’d like to get away from this connotation. My novel is nothing like the movie. My novel is about a young man who inherits a ring from his grandfather, benign as anything, right? Well, the ring comes with baggage; the ring comes with a memory. This memory is shared with my main character, Aubrey, in the form of extremely vivid and powerful nightmares. It takes him little over half the book to figure it all out, but let’s just say the ring plays back what his beloved grandfather did long before he was the sweet, dedicated, caring, family patriarch, and Aubrey’s grandfather. Aubrey with the never ending moral support of his longtime girlfriend, Dawn, eventually figures it all out. By confronting the past, Aubrey atones for his grandfather’s actions and ultimately is rewarded and the savior at the same time. I liked the story line and had it cooking in my brain for sometime.

Getting back to Thanksgiving and finishing my novel….I was trying to wrap up my novel for the November 30 submittal date and had been cranking away on Thursday. Through the entire month, I had been ahead on my word count and never felt pressured, but knew my climax and end were going to be tricky and required flawless timing. So, there I was hunched down in the Ikea ‘writing chair’ with my trusty Dell Latitude hammering away and really quite caught up in the scene I was writing when my wife, who completely oblivious to the challenge or emotion at hand says…”Hurry up! We have to go, come get the turkey and put it in the jeep!”. We had to drive ten miles to my sister-in-law’s house for the big Family dinner…and we had the turkey, which cooked all day. So I continued typing, telling my story, creating my scene and tears were rolling down my cheeks. It was the strangest thing….I was totally into my story/novel/scene (thank God for iPods and classical music!) – completely emotionally committed, I couldn’t help it, the tear came. My son actually came to me to enforce my wife’s command and said…”Dad! Come on let’s….are you crying? What’s wrong with you?” I also ignored him. So, there they were: my daughter, son, wife, and grandmother all with their coats on and everyone except my grandmother carrying something staring at me……I just kept on typing – I had to finish or I would loose the mood and flavor of my scene and ultimately the climax. Yes, I was rushed. Yes, I need to revisit the climax. No, I didn’t yell at anyone.

I couldn’t have done NaNoWriMo by myself without all the motivation from other NaNos, friends, and the various writing Podcasts I follow. Thanks to those digital writers out there that kept me motivated – kept me engaged…Mur Lafferty, JR Murdock, Holly Lisle, and Jordan Castillo Price. ”Thanks guys!”

Next projects? I am continuing work on ‘My Private Idaho’, a letter to Prez elect Obama on National Service, and one other story that is “speaking to me” but not yet defined.