Ghosts of Nano Past

2005: Lost. A pathetic attempt at one of my more pathetic story ideas; it'll be good once I get the feel for what sort of story it should be, though. Basically, it was a fantasy where the zodiac signs are characters.

2006: Lost, but got impressively far with a story I loved to death and plan to re-configure sometime. A quasi-realistic spiritual story about a bunch of teenagers who start a new religion.

2007: Won! A very dreamlike, surreal fantasy about a girl who falls victim to an evil spirit, and the efforts of her older sister and her friend to save her. Loosely inspired by my experiences with mental illness.

2008: Oh yeah, that didn't happen yet.

2004 - Untitled - 2716 words - Sci-Fi Adventure - MC gets himself discharged from the space navy and then has to figure out what to do with his life. I barely even got him off the ship. - Not much in this one.

2005 - Unchained - 22036 words - Sci-Fi Adventure - Mankind has barely colonized the solar system when they encounter a race from half-way across the galaxy. They've discovered a way to project matter an arbitrary distance in a straight line. They sent a probe to check us out; we captured it; they want it back. Excitement ensues. - This is one I'd like to finish.

2006 - Mattsachusetts - 8501 words - Sci-Fi - Matt Hamblin is a programmer in demand, so much so that people are willing to kill to get him. When the bad guys poison his wife, he transfers her brain to a computer simulation and goes there to live with her. - They say, "Write what you know," so I made the MC a programmer. An interesting nugget that also could use some revisiting.

2007 - Projection - 2774 words - Sci-Fi Adventure - I figured I'd rewrite Unchained; I had the story mostly mapped out and everything, but it felt so contrived. And every divergence from the original felt wrong. I didn't want to rewrite Unchained, I wanted to finish it. So, I started over:

2007b - Unfathomable - 6974 words - Sci-Fi/Fantasy Adventure (seeing a trend?) - Our protagonists are two guys who work as cogs in the IT department of some giant corporation. When a team building exercise goes awry, they're transported to a world where they have extraordinary powers, which they use to help win a war. When one of them gets drunk on power, the other has to give him a reality check. - I was having a blast with this one, but I started NaNo knowing that November was going to be difficult; I had a stupid work schedule and was also doing home improvements. Not sure if I'll ever try to get back to it, though.

2004 - Fire By Night -- This was the first and last time I actually tried to write a "novel" in November. It was set in a world 20 years or so after a K/T-scale asteroid impact. Despite valiant efforts to save it, it died on me (twice). Final word count: 15,240.

For the next three years, I tried to write collections of related shorter stories, in the hopes that I'd end the month with one or two that I could start shipping around to magazines or something. I'd plan out a detailed schedule, which would degenerate into incoherent rambling before the month was half over.

2005 - Writer's Block (aka Rambling Man) -- This was about a writer on trial in an Orwellian police state, where imagination was regarded as evil. This also began the tradition of the SPS (Self-Parody Scene), a useful tool for boosting word count and venting frustration. Final word count: 25,033.

2006 - Darc Days (aka Rambling Man II: This Time It's Personal) -- This time, I at least stuck with one set of characters. They were trying to get back to their homeworld using an experimental stardrive, in a galaxy where interstellar travel had long been lost. Basically they traveled from one isolated planet to the next, having adventures along the way, Doctor Who-style, but without (much) time travel. Final word count: 25,128.

2007 - Time is an Ocean (aka Rambling Man III) -- This is the only one that I might consider coming back to. It involved explorers from a 10,000-year-old civilization in a parallel universe, and a guy from our universe (or one like it). Final word count: 32,310.

2008 - I thought about just giving up and writing Rambling Man IV: This Time It's Official. However, because I have no firm grasp of reality, I'm planning to again try to write a real novel. Age of Vision is a project that's been evolving in my mind for far too long. High time it got written.

"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those doing it." ~ Chinese proverb

2006 :
- Beware of the Talking Chicken (won) - YA comedy about some kids trying to trap two secret agents-turned farmers-turned terrorists using chickens to bomb cities.
- This is Moose Central (won) - 50k in one day about some kid ending up in an alternate universe where moose control everything, and with a ninja farmer as the villain.
- Untitled (won) - A girl runs away on a cruise ship which is then taken over by a pirate (who was a real person - the NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson...I guess this was my way of being a fan).

2007:
- Untitled (won) - Modern fantasy about a business convention of wizards that gets snowed in, with an insane secretary/mail carrier who needs human sacrifices for the book she's writing (I can't really remember how this worked).
- Displaced Disasters (won) - Fantasy about countries who think they're having a war but actually aren't, with a lot of terrorists and cases of mistaken identity.

Wow, I didn't realize I'd written five novels in two Novembers. Or that they were this insane.

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Ooooh! Fun topic!

2003: Twins. "Hard" science fiction adventure/exploration story with some political intrigue and explosions for good measure. I broke 50k in November and finished the first draft (Around 70-80k, don't remember) in December. I had the 2nd draft done by Spring but never liked the ending, so tinkered until the next year, and then dropped it.

2004: The Unchosen Ones. Modern-day fantasy with a group of people banding together to defeat a great evil when the one prophesied to do it unceremoniously dies in the 2nd chapter. I loved this story, but had no real direction and just let the charcters do whatever they wanted. I've always meant to come back and give it a real treatment, but never got around to it. I skidded across the finish line with something like 50,010 words on November 30th, and the last 5,000 or so were a CHORE.

2005: Johnny Turner and the Discovery on the Moon: My titles keep getting longer! This one was intended to be the first in a series of YA/OC (Old Children. Like 10 or so. Is there a name for that or is that YA too?) books where Johnny Turner visits each planet in a human-populated Solar System. In this one, an alien artifact is discovered on the moon and Johnny gets caught up in an attempt to steal it. This was my first failure, as I was spending a lot of time trying to start a new fiction podcast that I did start in January of 2006.

2006: Various Scripts: I didn't write a "novel" but instead several scripts for my audio drama podcast. Those scripts ended up getting recorded in early/mid 2007 before I dropped the project due to the fact that it was VERY time consuming. I got very few words written by NaNo standards, but in completed scripts terms it was a pretty good month.

2007: Noilliramlis: If you know your Tolkien, you'll know what the Silmarillion is. I reversed it and planned on it being the definitive encyclopedia for the universe that I wrote the scripts for last year. I intended on again not doing a typical novel, and instead use NaNo to get me to write just a bunch of stuff. I failed miserably, with less than 2 days' worth of words written all month.

2006: (won) YA Mystery, where six kids wake up on an island together and have no idea why they're there. One of them was pregnant and no longer is, and they hear strange screams sometimes. Then they start to disappear, one by one... *yawn* It was awful, but it was my first go, and whoever said plots had to be good?

2007: (won) Mainstream, when I was feeling rather morose about life and decided to write my NaNo about a girl who's been buried alive. So it was 50,000 words of her dying, reflecting on her life, and hoping that someone would save her. Towards the end, she began losing her grip on reality, began hallucinating and such... And then she died.

This year, it's all action and plot.

2oo7 - Lost. A story about a vampire girl and a slave boy who follow along, unwillingly with a guy who refuses to tell them where he's goning to take them and why.

2oo8 - Didn't happen yet

__________
NaNoWriMo 2oo7: Neoma (3K/50K)
NaNoWriMo 2oo8: (??K/50K)

2007 Paper Tiger-(fail). Silly fantasy. A story of a group of twenty-something office workers in an anonymous company who discover the CEO is really an ancient wizard planning on taking over the world using the magic of social networking sites. Inspired by my brother's job at a company where they seemed to play all the time but no one ever actually DID anything. I got halfway through it, but mostly through dirty word count cheating. I attempted to write this dry, with no prep work or outline. This year I am going to do a detailed outline and rewrite it.

2007: "The Silence of This Wall" literary fiction, cross over 50,000 the Saturday of Thanksgiving and thanked the Good Lord for completing the mad dash. Possibly self-publishing through "Booksurge.com"

2008: "The Errors of Truth" literary fiction, can't wait to start... November 1st can't come soon enough.

www.frequencyofsilence.blogspot.com

2007 - Won - How a Notebook Changed my Life - Realistic fiction about a girl who finds a notebook hidden in her school auditorium that changes a lot of things in her life, including her thoughts on the future and her relationship with her best friend. Won, but never finished - I know how I want it to end though, and hopefully I'll keep writing some day.

2008 - The Shoe that Fit - Instead of having a happy ending, Cinderella's glass slipper somehow fits one of her sisters! As she sees her prince stripped away from her, she must cope using a new friend, a magical one, and another she never knew she had. Not written yet, of course :P

2003 - (won) - YA novel without a name. A special child gets kidnapped and taken into a beautiful world of lots of strange and interesting characters and needs to solve a riddle in order to save the world.

2004 - (won) - chick lit - I can't remember the name and can't find the file. About an assistant cruise director who falls for a playboy guest performer on her ship. It involves tulips and kayaking.

2005 - (won) - chick lit - "It Takes More Then a Cat." A woman who is emotional abused by her husband seeks refuge in her best friend, television, and her best friend's cat - all while trying not to have an affair.

2006 - (lost, miserably) - crime/suspense - "No Death." A woman stumbles on a dead body, reports it to the cops, but they rule it a suicide. She doesn't believe them and sets out to find the killer, but soon finds herself being stalked by someone she thinks is the killer.

2006 (Won) A Hole in Andrellas. Sci Fi set 10,000 years in the future. Revolved around a character over 10,000 years old that had taken the equivalent of Booster Spice. He was the last survivor of Earth fighting to save a colony world on the bring of destruction.

2007 (31,112) Voyage of the Amadeus. Sci Fi. This expanded one of the chapters from the previous year and was the story of my MC from 2006 as a young child as the last colony ship fled Earth before it was destroyed. Failed but with a new baby in the house I wasn't complaining. :^)

2008 Magic of the Highways. Fantasy/Adventure. Set in the present it explores the idea that the National Highway system was actually built to bury ancient magical leylines and contain their power. As time passed the magic has begun leaking out as a pair of high school students will discover. Why did the government want to contain the magic and why hasn't anyone heard about it before.

Really looking forward to November so I can get started. I wrote a very short story in the universe a few months back as a break from my larger Fantasy novel that I'm working on and decided I needed to make it my Nano.

Rolard

2006 A Hole in Andrellas (winner)
2007 Voyage of the Amadeus (32,111)
2008 Magic of the Highways (fingers crossed)

2007 - Against a Background of Infinite Stars (won) - Sci-fi work about a markedly dystopian future in which mankind has taken to living in colonies made out of comets flung out of solar systems at five percent the speed of light in order to escape from the Foam Born, who will stop at nothing to destroy them. In the meantime, children have fallen out of favor, and some kid named Pavel binds with a piece of alien machinery that talks to him in his head. Time travel is also a plot point. Never finished it, but hope to someday as soon as I get motivated enough for it. Another stumbling block: How do you say "Allah's Eye" in Arabic? That was the exotic name I picked out for the planet where this all was supposed to end. I wrote about three thousand words, then got sick and wrote nothing for about a week and a half, then barged in full speed and squeaked by on the 29th with something like 50,055 words.

2007 - Luna Caelum Solum. Won but unfinished. About 53,000 I think... Not bad for my first year!
A fantasy adventure about a girl and her friends who end up in a land that they all dreamt about and only thought of as a dream. Here they find out that they are the ones meant to save this world and restore it. Sounds cliche? I hope not! I've done my best to twist it up and make it unique~! *wink*

Last year, I killed my novel with too many subplots as a way to bring up my word count and honestly, after looking at it... it's a mess. It'll be so much easier to scrap it all, and re-do it. Now that I know what I am in for as my second NaNo, I've decided I'm going to avoid the subplots for the moment and stick with the main plot for this year. My novel started with NaNo so I feel it should be finished with NaNo. So out goes the old and I've been outlining and plotting ALL YEAR, and now I'm ready. I'm rewriting everything and this time, I will finish it WITHOUT killing it in subplots and such and next year, you'll all see me with a sequal for this one!
(hopefully)

Anyway, this year will be interesting because I have a volunteer job now three days a week. I work at an animal rehab center. Some of you guys might know what I'm talking about. I work at Lensc, or Lake Erie Science & Nature Center. So we'll see how I hold up to late nights and early mornings this time.
I'll just have to get used to having my old friends, coffee and sugar, around again, hehe.

"In a Writer's Dream... Forever Fantasy."

2007 - HnAM - gay romance story, filled with lovely things like violence and...uhh...violence.
It was meant to focus on characters as opposed to plot and setting like most of my fiction relies on.
I didn't get that far, I think about 10,000 words. :(

2008 - Not sure. I have a few ideas in mind...might finish the first one. But yeah.

I've been trying for a while:

'02: Untitled. One of the major plot points involved fairies. (I was 18, and I lost.)

'03: Clockwork. A semi-autobiographical novel about exactly how I was left at the side of a Wisconsin Highway at 1:37 am on a Tuesday morning by my ex when I was 16. (I won!)

'04: Untitled, I tried to write about a boy who solved a mystery involving a fairy prince. (I lost.)

'05: Pieces of the Day, I wrote a short story about or from the perspective of an inanimate object every day. I ended up with 35 vignettes. (I won, and it's my favorite.) Now I just need to edit it.

'06: The Summer of Yellow Fever, it was meant to be a travelogue, but ended up as a pornalogue. Five people are on a journey whose intent, purpose, and end they don't know. And they sleep with everyone they meet along the way. And there's no plot, just sex and chatting the in car. I made 50k, but it's not finished. (So I won.)

'07: Untitled, I was writing about breaking up with a guy that was much like the guy I was seeing. In the novel, that character called someone a "fairy." Two days later, I was single, and that story is not getting completed any time soon. (Lost like whoa)

So, I don't give things titles until the end is in sight, and I do not write the word fairy between Nov 1-Nov 30.

Hello all.

2004--Changers (won).

2005--Untitled (won). A 40's something man, a late bloomer, finally decides to do all the things he never got to do from age 18-25. College, partying, dating, traveling like a student...until he discovers that he is being trailed by what he thinks is the mafia. Things pick up when he discovers that he actually IS a mafia boss--20 years in the future.

2006--Split (won). An ordinary Joe turns out to be a secret government operative who has a SPLIT PERSONALITY which kicks in only when he has an assignment. The two personalities begins to blur and he seeks out those who made him this way.
I KNOW, I KNOW, it sounds a lot like the Christian Slater show "My Own Worst Enemy", but I did it here FIRST! Not as well, maybe, as NBC, but still...very similar to the idea I was working with.

2007--Usher (won). Storyline about a couple who likes to pull cons on unsuspecting marks. While pulling a large con at a theater (similar to the Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square) the protagonist is accused of murder. In order to clear his name he has to return and re-con the antagonist who has sought revenge for the past seven years.

Hey everyone!

2007 (won): Over the Summer: My novel is about a teenage girl who wakes up from a car accident only to find out that she can't remember the last 3 months (summer) of her life. Now, with the only woman she's really ever known gone forever, as well as a new family and new (old) friends, she must try and rebuild her life with the help of one special boy, a member of the unfamiliar family she's moved in with. She starts off despising him and wanting nothing to do with him until slowly but surely, parts of her summer return to her memory as she begins to fall in love with him all over again. They work through the school year trying to build back what once and to move on to a new beginning.