Note: This really is a ramble. You have been warned. Okay. So let’s talk about NaNo. For those of you who don’t know, NaNo stands ...

Thoughtful Thursdays: A Ramble About My NaNo Project, Interesting Journeys

Alexa Mintah

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Note: This really is a ramble. You have been warned.

Okay. So let’s talk about NaNo.

For those of you who don’t know, NaNo stands for NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every year in November, in which a bunch of insane writers up and decide “Hey, let’s try to jot down 50,000 words in a single month! Lol, it’ll be a blast!” And it is--though it is also heartbreaking and painful and complicated and frustrating and crap-I-hate-this-story-I’m-just-going-to-throw-in-the-towel-because-I-am-the-worst-writer-ever-esque.

But most of all, it is good (and I’ve done it every year since 2011, so you can trust me).

Not really. But don't we all like to pretend? tumblr

And by the end of it, you’ll have 50,000 (or more or less, depending on your personal goal) shining (and bad and ugly and horrid and beautiful) words for the world to praise (and bless and curse and... well, you get the idea).

So, all around, it’s a pretty great experience, even with the pain and frustration and late nights and crying if you’re prone to that sort of thing.

But to specifically discuss my nano project, I’m doing something a little bit different this year: even though I’m a pantser I normally try to plot at least a little bit before NaNo because HELLO it is hard enough to write 50,000 words in a month, but next to impossible when you have literally no idea where you’re going. But I knew I wouldn’t have any extra time to plot this October, so I didn’t think I was going to do NaNo this year. Then someone on the GoTeenWriters Community (I have no idea who, but if you’re out there, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS IDEA) said that they were going to do a collection of short stories instead of a whole novel this year. And I thought, YES. This is exactly what I need in my life. This way, I wouldn’t have to plot a thing and I could get to all the little plot bunnies that had been boumcing around in my head for the past few years. So I wrangled them all together and promised that at least a few of them would get a chance to shine this November as I pounded out the beginnings of their stories in a series of flash fics and short stories.

At least... that was the plan.

On the first day of NaNo, I began a story that’s been cooking in my head for most of the year: you know how in all those remakes of Beauty and the Beast, the girl meets a boy who’s been cursed for like a hundred years or more? Well, I had this idea where like, maybe he hadn’t been cursed for that long. Maybe “Beast Boy” was only just cursed yesterday, and he’s got a cousin who’s a geneticist, and the girl is the geneticist’s girlfriend (no love triangles here), and now they’re all scrambling to figure out how this curse actually works and how to scientifically break it ASAP. And there’s a lot of “how do your powers even work?” and “what in the world did you just do?” and “I have no idea I WAS JUST CURSED YESTERDAY I HAVE NO CLUE HOW THIS THING EVEN WORKS.” There also may or may not be a totally goth wizard dude who often Magics himself to look like Dumbledore, and Beast Boy might be an overly anxious conspiracy theorist. Maybe.

Anyways, I was really excited about this project, and I meant for it to just be a flash fic or a short story that lasted me a couple of days... But I’m still working on it. And there is no end in sight.

I literally have no idea where this story is going--I didn’t even know the characters names for sure until Day 3--but I love this story. These characters just kind of came to me beautiful (in my opinion), vibrant, and alive. They are hilarious and (when I convince myself to actually sit down and write) so much fun to work on. I know we’re in the honeymoon phase and that it’s probably gonna end soon and then I will hate them and they will hate me, but right now, I don’t even care. My new babies--Saxen, Irie, Sid, and Todd Blake--have captured my heart completely, and I am so excited to be working on them this November. :D

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So there was my short, possibly incomprehensible post about NaNo. I’m not sure I’ve ever rambled about my projects like this before (at least not without a specific purpose to the post), so let me know what you think about posts like this. Would you like to see more behind the scenes looks at my work or do you have no interest in the insane inner workings of my mind? lol. Well, please let me know in the comments, and leave a note about your current project or a link to where you talked about it. I’d love to hear from you. :)

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