November is a month full of ups and downs, including Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the end of Daylight Savings Time, and the start of cuffing season. Around this time of year people start to bundle up more, maybe spend more time indoors. As a new year approaches, you might set new resolutions for yourself, conveniently forgetting the ones you set at the beginning of this year.
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is in full swing by now, with literally dozens of people sacrificing their sleep and sanity to complete a 50k word novel in November. This year is no different for me. It’s amazing how fast it consumes you. And yet somehow I am around 5k words behind, which is still salvagable. At least that’s what I tell myself every year. Honestly, the middle slog always feels the hardest, it’s the point where your initial excitement has worn off and you haven’t gotten to the real action yet. Things are still getting set up, but hopefully that will result in a deeper story later.
My project so far is about a young and supple dental hygienist working hard each day, living with his loving mother and saving his pennies for a special lady he met in Las Vegas. He has everything planned out: he just has to work a couple more months, tuck away some more dough. Once everything is in place, he can say goodbye to his family, friends, and hometown to return to Sin City and live forever in matrimonial bliss. But fate has other plans for him, and whatever happens to our dear protagonist and his dreams will be anyone’s guess.
Even though I am behind, I have been enjoying carving out this world and seeing where my hapless characters go. It even has a (work in progress) playlist now! Some of the songs are featured in the story itself, others are more like mood music. All of them are guaranteed to be headbangers:
Stay tuned for a post-NaNoWriMo update/reflection/declaration to never put myself through this again!
Eunice Wang 