Words On Wednesday

I’ve always been interested in writing a story, and lately I’ve been revisiting the idea with a more approachable technique. Instead of knocking out a full novel in one fell swoop, I might publish a number of different stories in more of a serial format. When considering what I might write a story about, I’ve had several different ideas: a drug addict who sees large buildings and construction equipment as monsters, a high fantasy work that serves as a more literary telling of the adventures I’ve had across several MMO games, a post-apocalyptic tale of a society rebuilding from disaster. Each of these is obviously unique from the others, and if I were to commit to one, I would be stuck with it for the duration, even if I might want to entertain one of the other ideas. If I let myself switch, the stories might get caught up in the literature equivalent of development hell, and never actually publish anything at all. To avoid this unsavory scenario, I considered that I might write mor...

What is NaNoWriMo? November, for the uninitiated, is National Novel Writing Month. Realistically, anyone can write a novel at any point in the year, requiring as much time as they want. To participate in NaNoWriMo properly, however, you must write at least a 50,000 word novel entirely within the month of November. As such, it’s a little late to start for this year’s NaNoWriMo, but you could always start planning for next year. Source: https://nanowrimo.org/ As Kristian Wilson explains, there are numerous different ways that writers can approach NaNoWriMo. Most notably, there are people who plan a story and characters in advance, and there are others who begin writing at the start of November with very little forethought. Wilson describes these individuals as “plotters and pantsers” (Wilson, 2018). Either method is acceptable, per the official rules of NaNoWriMo. “I want to write a novel one day,” said many a would-be author at some point in their lives. Frankly, I’m sure a...