Am being a brave little writer and participating in NaNoWriMo. It’s a contest to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days starting on November 1st. Don’t panic, editing and re-thinking are discouraged, you’ve only to get words down. I’ve done a lot of the grunt work (that’s allowed) and have a synopsis, character sketch, and timeline. May even do an outline. All of this should be helpful in achieving the goal. What’s the contest winner get? The satisfaction of knowing that you can do it, and at the end of 30 days, I may have something I could actually turn into a publishable piece. Or at least the satisfaction of knowing that it’s something I could do. Confidence building etc. So wish me luck and sanity.

Goal:
Words a day 1,666.67
Words a week 12,500

Synopsis: My story is about an American woman, an artist called Annie, who moves to London at the age of eighteen to go to art school. Meets musician Kenneth, has passionate affair, marries him and has two kids with him while his band becomes one of the biggest acts out there. She doesn’t stop being an artist and has her own success and her own identity other that being Rock Star Ken’s wife. After nearly twenty years of marriage, with her ignoring his rock-star infidelity etc, but always coming back to her and the children, he leaves her for a 19 year old french pop singer. She goes through everything you would expect and months later is a complete wreck. A friend of hers, another rockstar ex wife, decides to take her out and break her out of her rut. They go to a dinner honoring a friend of theirs in the fashion world and Annie gets thoroughly drunk and disgusting, but in a charming way. While the friend is trying to get her out without making a scene, Daniel who is also a fan of this designer, sees them and feeling sympathetic to Annie, comes up to say hello. He has known both of them forever, because of their husbands, he likes Annie’s art, been to a couple of her showings and bought a couple of pieces. Has even been over to her home with Ken for dinner. Friend asks for help with drunken Annie, he gives it. He tries to call her after to see how she’s doing and be friendly and supportive etc (he has guilt feelings as he’s known for fooling around with young women as well, he excuses himself from being like her ex as he’s never left any of his wives for a younger woman) and she tells him to fuck off. That pisses him off but later when he runs into the mutual friend from the drunken night, he asks about her and is told that Annie won’t speak to anybody. They decide to force the issue and find Annie holed up in her home, she’s trashed, the place is trashed, so they hose her down and tidy things up. They stay with her until she sobers up and help her get her back on track. She starts taking back her life, drawing and painting. Daniel comes around again just to be friendly and they start a friendship that turns into love.

That relationship will have it’s own ups and downs with both of them being celebrities (him major, her minor) but I am going to give them a happy ending. There will be lots of flashbacks to wild rock-n-roll shenanigans, which is stuff that turns me on. The rest should be relate to life in general and stuff I love in particular. Music, art, girlfriends, men . Sounds chick-lit-ish, and it is, but chick lit is fun and easy to read, so I’m praying that it’s almost at easy to write. If it isn’t, keep it to yourself and be an Oceangal Cheerleader!!!

Also if you want to be helpful, leave me a comment with some suggestions for scenes, sources etc. Make yourself useful!

Edit: 12/1/08 – Didn’t finish it nor did I hit 50k, my final word count for thirty days is 28,398. I could make excuses but I hate hearing them from other people, sounds too much like whining (most of the time) so I won’t. I’m looking at it as a crash course in “for real” writing and learned a lot I can use in future writing escapes.  I’ll keep my NaNo Novel, there are parts I wrote that I love, maybe I can moosh it around and use it in a real novel one day. Lot’s of work to do though, I’ll keep occupied. There are books I want to read, story lines to work on, and music that I’ve acquired that I have to listen to in order to justify buying more new music. Thanks to everyone who understood and supported me in my endeavor. – Oceangal