OctNonWriMo

NaNoWriMo also has that effect on some people.

Yes, only a few weeks till November, or NaNoWriMo as some of us calls it. National (more like International these days) Novel Writing Month.  The forums are heating up, the various participants are blogging, and planning and plotting are done by the kind of people who do those things.

Correspondingly, it becomes harder to not start writing already on all of the ideas that pop up, and they do pop up pretty frequently as the time draws close. I don’t know what I am going to write about if I’m still around and capable of writing in November (which I sincerely hope). I have said half in jest that my NaNoWriMo story will be the one that has survived unwritten through October.

In other words, October is Non-Writing Month, thus today’s headline.

I have already started on a couple stories that might have been expandable to short books.

“Sucks to be a succubus” – about two teenage boys in the magical world of Arcanus who try to summon a succubus (female sexual demon). Because they gets one of the magical words wrong, they end up summoning the soul of a dying teen boy from Earth into the excessively sexy female body. Chaos ensues.  Pro: I already have a lot of worldbuilding for Arcanus and Myrror, for an earlier NaNoWriMo story that annihilated itself and its backups (which were on the same disk, for convenience). Con: A month with a succubus. -_-;

Crystalight: A world with superheroes but no supervillains, because superpowers come from attuning to the mystic light of the Crystals in the half-ethereal Overworld, and only young teenagers of good reputation are allowed to enter the Academy built around the Crystals. So nothing can go wrong… or can it? Pro: I’ve written Magic School stories since long, long before Harry Potter saw the light of day. Con: Not enough content for a month. I would have to contrive a lot.

Still unwritten:

“Return to Niniveh”: A young man start hearing voices telling him that he is the reincarnation of the prophet Jonah. El, king of the gods, needs his services again: As the only known prophet to convert a large city, he is El’s last best hope to avert the end of the current era. “Don’t make me come down there!” Pro: Psychological angle. Is he really the prophet reborn, or just crazy? Con: Potential blasphemy, and lots of it.

“Mirror world”: One day there is a girl in the large bathroom mirror. This would not have been uncommon except the one in front of it is a boy. The girl is his counterpart in the Mirror World, and he gets over to the other side to help her investigate a mystery.  Mirror World borders on many different worlds, most of them magical worlds strikingly different from ours. Pro: With unlimited worlds, it should be easy to get to 50 000 words in a month. Con: No plot, no point, no message.

Or I could reboot some older story, in which case there are too many to even list by name.  I have been writing since I was little, after all.  I wonder if I will stop before my body gives out.