I Am Writing A Novel About Envelopes - Seriously

Today is my half birthday. Not that this is important to NANOWRIMO but since I no longer write on LiveJournal much, I decided to post it here on Retentivewrimo.

More important than today to nearly everyone else writing a Nano in Chicago was that our kickoff party was yesterday evening. I went to this amazing yearly event at the Double Door afterwards (a concert where six bands dress up as six other bands and play a mini-set of nothing but the other band's songs - which this year included covers of Pearl Jam, Culture Club, The Misfits, and Alice Cooper) so this is the first chance I've had to write about it.

We officially announced that Chicago is battling both New York City and Toronto this year. That was a lot of stress on Friday since I wasn't sure a three way battle was going to work (irony, my novel is about a love triangle). But in the end I think it's going to be fun to battle two teams at once. Thankfully it's not battling them combined.

Rematching Toronto will certainly be interesting. There is a bit of bad blood there due to how some people on Toronto conducted themselves in 2006. But I don't think that person is around this year. 12-year olds have short attention spans.

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The new ML threw together quite a shindig at the Uptown Writer's headquarters.

I completely forgot to take out my camera, however. So unlike last year, there's no documentation that it ever happened. There were a few familiar faces but a lot of new ones as well. Really I think there were only about four people left from my first NANO party (the TGIO party in 2004).

I ended up in a little group in a corner with my friend Samantha (this is her first year after she thought about it the last two) and a guy from NPR (well, freelance).

It was during the conversation we were having the last hour of the party or so that I finally came up with a novel idea.

It's a little bit weird. But I am writing in humor and satire so I can kind of get away with it and still be considered fiction and not fantasy.

The main two characters in my novel are going to be Netflix envelopes. Or, well, envelopes from a movies-by-mail company very similar to Netflix. One is going to be a romance envelope and one is going to be an action/adventure envelope.

How to actually make a system of delivery where the same envelope gets sent to different addresses is going to be the issue. Maybe they'll be Netflix-esque sleeves.

Anyhow, they'll be anthropomorphic. And I think the metaphor goes along with my original thought of the difference in language between men and women.

There is going to be a parellel human storyline (this was something I discussed with my friend Kim, a short story writer, at the bar yesterday and she thinks it's a crucial thing) but this will be the first time I have a non-human protagonist. Though it's not an elf or anything.

I think the hardest thing to do is not have the story turn into "Cars." But at least I'm off and running with the idea.

Finally Getting Back Into NANOWRIMO Mode

In the past couple of months, I've been watching the "Up" series from the United Kingdom (off of Netfix of course since I'm an addict). This is a major documentary project from Michael Apted (who also directed fiction movies like "Gorillas In The Mist" and "Nell." In 1964, a cross-section of 7-year olds from across England (sort of sad that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were not included) were selected as the future of England in the year 2000. Each seven years, these participants are filmed for an update on their lives.

There weren't any extras on the DVD until "42 Up." But on this one, I watched the director's commentary (it's something I don't usually do but I love these films) and Apted states that he includes the families of the subjects to track the time that passed because people don't look that much different between 28 and 42.

Well I can tell you that having started doing NANOWRIMO at 28 and now being 32, I definitely feel different.

Yesterday was the first time in 2007 I really went on the boards. And I ended up not going to sleep until 1:45 a.m. Today I'm out sick from work. I remember nights of writing in my three earlier attempts in the speed writing mecca and I know I stayed up way later than that almost every night that I wrote.

Looks like that's not going to happen this year. So I'm just going to have to actually write during daylight.

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I don't know how that revelation is going to effect my word count. It can't be entirely healthy for it. But more of a problem is I have lost my inspiration.

I was going to write my novel based on this crush I had on this girl that was totally unrequited. The general idea of the story was the difference in languages between men and women and how the same event can be interpreted entirely differently.

It was going to be a return to the he-said, she-said of my novel from 2004. This formula worked for a lot of words as it was almost like writing two novels at once. Though in this one, I think both characters are going to be in the same city. In "Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream?" one character was in Warsaw and the other was in Paris and the only interaction they had until about 60% through the book was via e-mail.

In this case, I would run into the stumbling block of having to repeat the same story twice. And that is just boring to me.

But back to the dilemma. A couple of weeks ago, I went into my office to catch up on some work and the only other person around (it was a Sunday) was this girl. Anyhow, she had no idea I was there and was blabbing away on her phone in this voice that just bothered me so much. It was a voice I had never heard from her before and I had this, "what was I thinking?" moment.

Now I'm just pretty much indifferent to the whole situation and it's killed my desire to fictionalize it. I probably still will, but it's not going to be the same. It was never going to be the exact plotlines anyhow as that does not make for good prose.

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I kept thinking in the 20 days between logins on the NANO site that I was probably missing my chance to get involved in Chicago's word war this year. It did get mentioned on the "welcome back" thread in the region's boards but nothing was firmed up before I started a thread on it yesterday.

So far Boston seems to be a likely candidate (unless they challenge New York City or like Detroit last year challenge their World Series opponent city - in this case Denver). Toronto's planning something with themselves so a rematch isn't going to happen. And people want to beat up on St. Louis again but that never felt like a fair fight back in 2005.

I'm hoping to be captain again this year (after losing the post in 2006). And hopefully Chicago will get back above .500. We're definitely not going to put the team together too early like last year and get people in mid-October who are geeked about NANO and then never even start writing in November.

So I guess procrastination may help Team Chicago's cause.

It's not really helping mine as far as what I'm going to sit down and write in 2007.