Okay so the day before yesterday I wrote this magnificent chapter that I fell in love with. It was beautiful, it was heart-warming, and best of all it was so relevant to my novel. Then yesterday happened, and I somehow wrote 1200 words about pet rocks.
"There arose a great love for pet rocks, the strangest of brain fevers, wherein a man believes that his finest hope for companionship is a piece of stone with novelty eyes."
Oh god, how did it come to this? Please post your worst brain explosions from this year's NaNo, and tell me I'm not alone!
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2005: Jimmy and the Magical Pants Lord (pwned)
2006: The Life-Giving Waters of the Nazi Handkerchief (pwned)
2007: Heaven and Hell-o Kitty (in the process of pwning)
50,106 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2007 - 15 05
Are you kidding? I'd love to read a comedy piece about the wierd fascination people have with pet rocks ;)
50,123 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2007 - 17 49
PET ROCKS ARN'T REAL????
*sobs uncontrolably*
I gotta say I held things together fairly well throughout Nano. I did tend to wander a bit into exploring my character's psyche, but that's expected in a psychological thriller.
I really think my brain is more explodie now I'm finished, actually. Mind you, I did have to get up hella early to go get filmed baging and taging wallabies. That was fun (tho I'm tired as right now).
*pats his pet rock*
Ray
----------Nano04 - 28 days| The Allgator Man
05 - 24 days| The Unlife and Times of a Scotts Berserker Vampire
06 - 16 days(ML)| Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Star
07 - 21 days(ML)| Written Off
"...May the muse be with you!"
50,525 / 50,000
Nov 26, 2007 - 00 12
The story of my worst NaNo 2007 brain explosion begins on the Saturday before the second Star Bar write-in, when I wrote a sequence that began with my main character waking up, rubbing her boyfriend's face and saying that he needed a shave.
The next day at the write-in, I read what I'd written the day before to get myself back into my story - and I discovered that although I'd written about my main character and her boyfriend showering together and then visiting the nearby town they were holidaying close to, I'd forgotten to include him shaving (not a crucial plot-point, but an important character-point nonetheless - the boyfriend always prides himself on looking clean-cut).
So, just after the shower scene, I went back to insert what I initially thought would be a quick paragraph or two about what shaving might be like in the 24th-Century...
...but an hour or so later, I ended up writing just over 900 words about a guy taking a basic present-day-type shave.
It was good fun, though. Several years ago in the real world I switched back from electric razors to blades, and as a result I have genuinely enjoyed shaving ever since. This became the basis for most of those 900 words - although he lives in the 24th-Century, the boyfriend prefers to shave "20th-Century style" with blades, oil and foam, so I tried to convey the enjoyment of that.
As well, I made it a very romantic shave - my main character applied the oil and foam to her boyfriend's face, hugged him from behind while he shaved, and then cleaned him up.
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2008
* Script Frenzy! - 'Star Trek: Sanchez - Long Way Home Redux' (WINNAH!)
* NaNoWriMo - to be determined
2,339 / 50,000
Nov 26, 2007 - 00 55
I think my novel's been close to Total Meltdown from the start, let alone a brain explosion. Can I possibly write 47,000 words in 4 days??!
----------Nano 06/07: Dismal Failure
SF! 08: Scripted attempt at ressurection of O6
'The Branded'
50,259 / 50,000
Nov 26, 2007 - 05 09
I think there's a subset of (insane) NaNo authors who try to do the whole thing in the first 24 hours! I couldn't hack it, personally, but compared to that 4 days seems tame.
It's never time to give up, though. Even if you only produce a few thousand words, it's still an achievement and it gives you something to build off in the future. Or, if you feel it's doomed from the start, you can start NaNo again in December!
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2005: Jimmy and the Magical Pants Lord (pwned)
2006: The Life-Giving Waters of the Nazi Handkerchief (pwned)
2007: Heaven and Hell-o Kitty (in the process of pwning)
51,822 / 50,000
Dec 2, 2007 - 19 36
Oh god, I had so many "brain explosions" this time around.
1. I was trying to study for exams during the first part...and as a result all my frustration with medical school came out. Hogwarts turned into the UNSW med faculty, with its group projects, "self directed learning", "grad capabilities"...
2. Then...whenever I ran out of ideas, I wrote whatever song was on the radio at the moment into the story. This is a problem, as you discover when you find the ending of the whole novel hinges on one song that makes very little sense.
3. Merpeople come out of nowhere in my story. Because they were cool and a boy chucked a rock into a lake, so I thought I'd have them pop out because it was a !magical! lake. They ended up lurking in the story for a good three chapters :P
50,105 / 50,000
Dec 3, 2007 - 04 30
Woah... Nice... :P
My only brain explosion was the 1000 words in which they made a vegetable garden...
Oh, and the part where i began spouting really cliched mutant propaganda...
"But they were just ghosts of the past now, and although she could hear them louder than most, Kaj realised now that she would have never belonged in such a world as that. That this was her time, and that this was her chance to make her mark on the world.
She realised that no matter how much of an outcast she had felt as a child, throughout the vast majority of her life, she was meant to be here... She was the one who had made this happen this way, she was here for the mutant turn around, for the time when they would rise, and not be treated as a minority, as slaves, as something less than human...
They WERE human, but they were better, a different breed, the future, and they were taking up their mantle now!
They were mutants, or the supporters of the mutants, and they were damn proud of it."
Yeah, that... But MORE! :P
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NaNo 07: A Ghostly Belonging
Genre: Sci-Fi / Drama / Psychological
Deaths: 5 featured, and about 20 in the battle.
Mutants: 90-ish
Status: First Draft, Complete.
Dedicated to Dragon; the best ra
50,259 / 50,000
Dec 3, 2007 - 20 11
MUTANT PRIDE!
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2005: Jimmy and the Magical Pants Lord (pwned)
2006: The Life-Giving Waters of the Nazi Handkerchief (pwned)
2007: Heaven and Hell-o Kitty (in the process of pwning)
50,249 / 50,000
Dec 4, 2007 - 05 36
My hackneyed version of Cahron spends a paragraph musing about how hard it is to get the stench of marsh water out of a robe/ cloak/ cape like garment.
And makes horrible, horrible puns about 'hell' at the same time. And ancient romans.
I think that was one of my lowest points.
----------Oh, and the chapter dedicated to the boat, and the alternate history it had created for itslef. Becasue it didn't suffer isolation well, or something.
Anyway- it was bad. Very bad.
*shudders*
Sometimes sucess demands a certain refined insanity