Time to put my writing hat on...

I was too tired to write about it last night, but I attended a 2 hour meeting of the National Novel Writers Month, a.k.a. nanowrimo last night. My guess is that there were nearly 20 aspiring novelists in attendance with every age group represented. I was expecting something resembling a writing workshop with the topic of how to approach novel writing. It was nothing like that.

There were three people organizing the event which was held at the Naperville Public Library (95th street branch). The first activity had the organizers applying pictures of fictional and non-fictional characters on everyone's back. Each person was to seek out others and ask yes or no questions of that person until you figured out who you were. I was Medussa, and yes, I figured it out before the time was up.

Next, Tim Yao explained what nanowrimo was and fielded a couple of questions. I was still scratching my head at this point.

The third exercise was to move to different tables then write one truth and one lie about yourself, written as a novel, and then were were to guess which was which. Of the four at our table only two of us completed both truth and lie in the 3 minutes given.

Lastly, we sang, yes, sang a parody of Jimmy Buffet's Margarittaville which was recorded to be put on the nanowrimo website.

Mind you, aspiring writers aren't generally known for their gregarious personalities. And as I said, this was not exactly what I'd expected, but I enjoyed it.

As a side note, they put me on to a free novel writing tool, papel. I've yet to use it but I'm going to take a close look at it.

So, the gist of nanowrimo is a contest during November to write 50,000 words in a novel. At midnight on the last day of November, your work becomes a pumpkin, so to speak. Something I didn't realize until I'd registered on the nanowrimo site is that the novel has to be started from scratch; no existing work may be used.

So, out goes Red Crisis and The Ritual. I need another concept, and fast. Here are my ideas thus far:

• A story of a middle aged man who is not happy and is contemplating the worth and meaning of his life and whether it's worth continuing. As he teeters between life and death he reflects on the years that have passed.
• A story of survival of a suburban family after a total collapse of civilized infrastructure... no utilities, police, fire... nothing...
• A story of a man's family ancestry and the interesting, and sometimes disturbing things he learns about them, and himself along the way.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Any thoughts? Suggestions? Anyone gonna play this game with me?