Inspirations

This blog has been rather quiet, wouldn't you agree? No random thoughts, no chit-chat about writing and, most noticeable of all, no incessant demands for coffee. I guess some of you must think that this silence has something to do with me giving up on NaNoWriMo, right?

WRONG!

The truth is the last couple of weeks have been rather hectic. Not only have I been settling into a new job, but most of my free time in the evenings has been dedicated to jotting down idea after idea in preparation for November. You can barely move in my room for all the random bits of paper strewn about the place, all covered with idle sketches and plot stuff!

In short, it has been a busy couple of weeks.

Probably the busiest I've been in quite some time, actually.

I imagine you must think that, what with all this talk of frantic planning, I must be ready for November 1st. Right?

WRONG!

There is still a ton of stuff I could be working on right now, but with only a few days remaining I can only conjure up so much, and I have absolutely no idea what a lot of this story will be about. But you know what?

I'm okay with that.

There have been a couple of times in the past, before I ever took part in any NaNoWriMo'ing shenanigans, where I have spent over a year planning out every inch of a story that, when the time came to write the thing, the project fell to pieces. In my limited experience, I do feel that there is such a thing as too much planning. Over that time I transformed a basic concept into something so ridiculously epic and monumental, with countless characters struggling to throw themselves into the limelight, all the locations mapped and pretty much every aspect of the story sussed out. Yet, after all that attention to detail, there was no way I could get the project up off the ground no matter how hard I tried.

Looking back in retrospect, I suspect it had something to do with how rigid the planning was. There was little room to breathe, and no possibility for a character to make a sudden unexpected choice or deviate from the beaten path without shattering the story into pieces. I chalked it all up to experience and decided that, in the future, I would be a little less crazy when it came to working on an outline. An outline is useful, but go too far and it can be just as detrimental as not making the effort to plan at all.

Then again, it probably had more to do with the story being a bit rubbish. And by "a bit rubbish" what I actually mean is "so putrid even the rats wouldn't go near it". Either way, like most of these mistakes, I learned my lesson.

Anyway, where was I going with all this...

Ah! Of course! NaNoWriMo 2014...

The last update on this journal blog thing mentioned that I had some very basic ideas for this project. Lots of disparate ideas with little to connect them, that sort of thing. Thankfully the last couple of weeks have been rather productive and I have worked out the basic premise of the story and several of the key characters that will be integral to the plot. So far it seems to be going rather well, and here's to hoping I can scribble down a few extra bits and pieces in preparation for November 1st.

At this stage I'm reluctant to discuss my story in any detail. It was hard enough getting this far into the blog without crumbling under the pressure of expectation, but when November is underway I might go so far as to provide a little synopsis of what it's about. Until then, I aim to keep it all low-key.

What I will do is let you see what books and other mediums of entertainment have inspired this project.

Quite a list! Some books have been more of an influence than others, but there is no doubting how important each of them have been throughout this entire process.

So yes, there is a plan. Sort of. A very brief one. A basic outline with a massive amount of freedom to allow the story to expand and change if the need arises. There is no chance of planning myself into a corner this time, and the thought of seeing what weird and wonderful choices my characters might make does fill me with excitement. It's almost akin to stepping out into the great unknown, and it certainly feels very liberating. What will be fascinating is seeing what my imagination can create, what stories I could tell in the space of 30 days...

I think it's time to bring this blog post to a close. Struggling to stay awake these last couple of weeks and could do with some tea and chocolate. 

As I have said, time and time again: Tea and chocolate makes everything better.