My five years of NaNoWriMo failure have taught me that the secret to completing a 50,000 word novel in one month’s time is clearly to know enough about what you’re going to write. But not too much.

The first three years I entered the project with no clear idea of a plot, and the result was boredom for the author. Not knowing where I was going, I ran around in circles trying to come up with ideas as I wrote, and the result was a lot of plodding dialogue and exposition that led to a great big nothing. The worst was 2004 when I started what promised to be an interesting murder mystery without having any clearly designed structure or characters, making my task of crafting a complex story quite impossible. Basking in the failure of that season, I didn’t even attempt NaNo the following year.

Last year, for the first time, I was ready. My idea was so good that I was able to plot out the entire novel several weeks in advance of the November 1 starting date, and my characters were real and rich. The starting gun sounded and I exploded into my work, drafting almost 20,000 words in just a week’s time. All I had to do was follow my map.

Or so I thought. As I entered the meat of my work I found that the detailed outline I scripted was less a map than a bossy GPS telling me exactly where to turn, and slowly and surely it directed me closer and closer to driving my car into a f*cking lake. I became convinced that my novel needed a more logical introduction and a far more interesting middle portion, but I didn’t want to deviate from my pre-November planning. So, disappointed, I stopped writing in the second week, allowing an idea that I still believe has promise to fester and rot in its uncompletedness [sic].

This year my idea pales in potential to last year’s, but I think that will help. I don’t have any exaggerated attachment to the story and subsequent desire to make it turn out perfect, meaning if the story goes south I can just improvise and get to my goal. At the same time, my goal is more than just 50,000 words: I have a clear arc and conclusion to the story allowing my motivation to finish, with enough filler space built in to allow my imagination room to roam and not get sagged down under the weight of the story’s (few) pre-planned necessities.

After five years, I think I finally have the right formula for me. I think this is the year I do it.

Does eating a bowl of super-healthy cereal crafted solely of tasteless fiber allow me to go eat that new, delicious-looking Frisco sandwich from Burger King I saw advertised on the television last night?

Why yes, yes it does.

(But you hate BK, Peter. Everytime you go there you’re already scolding yourself as you drive into the line, and then after the meal you feel like filling the empty paper bag with waste product, setting it on fire and hurling it through the front window in protest of the fact that you paid three more dollars than you would have at McDonalds for something you enjoyed half as much. What will be different this time?)

Well, for once a BK sandwich actually looks good.

(Yeah, this’ll end well.)

New sleek laptop for Peter = new sleek layout for the weekly NFL picks!

Prediction results by team through Week 7:

Hours of brainstorming, browsing the NaNoWriMo forums and watching the Rockies teach Eric Byrnes some manners, coupled with a couple brisk walks, has finally yielded an acceptable idea for me to write about for NaNoWriMo this year:

A mysterious, seemingly self-aware letter sends unemployed writer Evan to a small northern town where a car crash and an omnipresent orange cat lead to his being elected mayor - just days after the town declared its independence, and a convoy of state cops are already on the way to “correct” matters.

You steal it and I kill you.

My story from last year still nags at me, because I think it’s such a great idea with a powerful ending. But it’ll have to wait, even if it keeps forcing every idea I have to involve a small town being saved by an outsider. Hopefully this plot, wacky as it will surely devolve into, will yield a result somewhat varied from that.

I can’t remember where I discovered NaNoWriMo, but I know the idea floored me. Write a 50,000 word novel in one month: November. Quantity over quality: cage the inner editor and just…write, for an entire month. For those who always wanted to sit down and pen the Great American Novel, here’s the deadline for your first draft.

While that wasn’t me, it sure as hell sounded like fun.

2002 found the perfect storm of events for me to get sucked into the WriMo vortex. I was at SIUE having one of my easiest (and most successful) college semesters, and that it was fall did not hurt. Without the changing of the seasons my life would be a drab affair, and my favorite transition has always been the one into colder air, with the vibrant fall colors, the anticipation of the beloved holiday season and the reintroduction of hot chocolate, not to mention my ability to drag out my superior winter wardrobe. (Not gonna lie, I’m kind of a stud.) The combination of university life, sipping Starbucks in the university center, pounding away on a laptop while the temperatures got cooler and cooler was an addicting combination.

I managed to get 10,000 words out before I lost all hope.

2002 Excerpt:
Mortimer the Proud had been missing for a month, but here he was, curled up on Shane’s welcome mat. The jingling of his keys awoke the feline, and upon recognition of his master a rather loud meow resulted. Shane never knew his cat was a hunter; bred from birth entirely in his house, the animal rarely liked venturing outside even for a moment and showed very little ability to capture prey under his roof, either. Shane halfway looked forward to the day his home was invaded by mice, just to see if his pet would run away from the rodents just as he did whenever some strange person dared enter the cat’s domain. Now, lost for a month, here Mortimer was, looking just as plump as the day he disappeared. Maybe some older feline took him under his wing and showed him the ways of the wild. Maybe one of the neighbors took him in and kept him fed, forgetting to call and tell him that they picked up his only housemate. Or maybe his cat had been replaced with a more street-savvy clone, alike in appearance but not in mind. It was probably the last one.

Interest was never my issue with NaNoWriMo, nor time. Both of my fall semesters in ‘02 and ‘03 were not incredibly busy, and the last three falls were spent working at Circuit City. Plenty of time to slip in those 1,677 words each day, with catchup time on days off. Still, ‘03 brought the world no more than 2500 of my words, with ‘04 a paltry 2800. ‘05 was a non-starter, with your author caught in Denver on a business trip for the first four days of November. NaNo had slowly evolved into a huge NoNo.

2004 Excerpt:
Rick Setser wasn’t the most popular kid at Carlisle High as he began his junior year, but his 1997 red Mustang started to change that. Acquired by his uncle from a lot in Indiana, they spent the summer of 2003 fixing it up, and when Rick pulled into the parking lot behind the high school on the first day of school he erased any chances of being asked how he had wasted his summer vacation. Seniors who had made fun of him in years past gawked over the condition of the vehicle, its loud motor filling the parking lot with enough sound to completely drown out the first bell notifying students to get their tardy asses into the building. His girlfriend, abandoned during the summer months he spent in Indianapolis, could only watch as she became his ex-girlfriend; the more popular girls of the class of ‘05 swarmed around him in admiration of his vehicle, one-by-one demanding that he take them for a ride after the abbreviated first day of school.

Then came 2006.

I came up with an idea. Inspired by a Bruce Hornsby song (even if the novel had nothing to do with the song - seriously,) and given time to brainstorm while visiting Emily in Carbondale on my days off, I hatched an interesting plot about a small family in Southern Illinois dealing with the effects the changing economy were having on their small business, and how the return of the protagonist’s long lost wild baby sister promised to help. The idea was unique, the characters had promise, and most importantly, for the first time ever, I had an ending. And a great one to boot.

I prepped and prepared. A notebook was filled with character details, plot outlines and other random ideas that could be worked in. I purchased Chris Baty’s No Plot, No Problems, an excellent guide to NaNoWriMo that got me further pumped for the affair. November came and I my story laid out such that I could dive in and flesh out the details, and suddenly Microsoft Word was alive with the sound of awesome.

Then my inner editor escaped and said “ROWWWWRRRRRR!!!!! YOUR WRITING SUCKS!”

2006 Excerpt:
Not much had changed, she thought, as she moved throughout the center aisle in an almost dancelike fashion, twirling around as if to consume the sights from every possible angle, her purse flailing about and barely avoiding a dangerous collision with an oven. The merchandise had been updated in her absence; certainly the televisions were a far different picture from when she last laid her eyes upon them. Still, the row of glistening washers and dryers were a more than familiar sight, as were the mammoth refrigerators opposite them, still obviously polished everyday by the proprietor. The white and black square tiles sparkled from a recent scrubbing, though the beige walls, once white as one-half of the floor, had seen better days. This had all been beaten into her memory just as much as the comfort of her mother’s smiling face, and she smiled as the small gaps in her recollections were quickly filled in.
No computers, though. She smirked at his obstinacy.

The characters weren’t clicking, especially the lead, who came off too stoic and boring. Too much dialogue, not enough action. Blah blah blah. What was supposed to be a mere first draft was being picked apart like I was suddenly a literary agent, or even someone who reads fiction at all that doesn’t have to do with murders along Route 66.

21,612 words into November my characters fell silent.

I don’t know if I’m in love with NaNoWriMo or the idea of NaNoWriMo. People getting together in coffee shops typing away at their personal masterpiece, having word wars and dares as their work slips further and further into a state of absolute ridiculousness…and closer and closer to 50,000 words. Even if my writing is done in solitary, the feeling of pounding out those early words in the dawn of the eleventh month are a rush, but perhaps moreso is the anticipation that’s felt in October. Brainstorming, checking other people’s NaNo blogs and constantly checking the WriMo forums for what other daring “novelists” are thinking and fretting about - such fun. The community aspect is endearing, connecting you with thousands of other wannabe scribes worldwide, some more successful than you, and many even less so. Maybe that’s the most fun, combined with the fantasy of the coffeehouse novelist and the upper crust attitude it subscribes you to. I don’t know.

What I do know is November is 21 days away, and plot or no plot I’m going again.

Shut up.

EngadgetHD has a gallery of screencaps from various new HD channels such as CNN and The Weather Channel, making your author drool with jealousy (especially the graphics on TWC.)

According to reports, so far baseball is all TBS has been able to show in HD, which is understandable considering the vast amount of 90s sitcoms they throw on their schedule. One would hope that their original series are at least filmed in HD, or else it’s a big waste of bandwidth. Give TBS credit for at least one thing: thanks to their exclusivity on the LDS and NLCS, they broke the Big Ten Network’s record for most HD penetration at launch, even if Comcast had to get molested by half of Chicagoland to give it clearance in Cubs Country.

Emily and I have a 27″ Samsung tube that I bought in 1996 to get us by, and it works (other than a nagging loose composite connection problem) for now and we see no reason to buy an HDTV until it craps out for good. That said, I find it hard to explain the level of my enthusiasm when I found out that our Mediacom DVR box, which is used as their HD box for customers that desire such options, passes through all the local channels in HD, which means I can watch the national HD feeds on the broadcast networks. Even on my little tube the difference between The Office in widescreen on the analog feed and the HD feed is incredible, with a sharper picture, far more brilliant color and a Dolby 5.1 sound mix to boot. Even better are the programs not fed in widescreen on the analog channels, in particular sports; watching some football on Sunday was far better having Fox and CBS’s widescreen presentation.

(Speaking of, NFL Picks tomorrow.)