Sunday, November 9, 2008

November is NaNoWriMo

This month is National Novel Writing Month. Funny enough, I found out about it in my Macworld magazine (they were reviewing some novel writing software). The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by December. Any time I hear or read about people writing, I always think about my project "Lord or the Ring". I started it some 4-5 years ago, now, and never finished it. In short: take the premise of Lord of the Rings and apply it to a modern-day spiritual warfare story. Not completely creative, but let me tell you the context.

When I started with the idea, I was working with the student ministry under Jack McCarty. We had come off a successful "movie" series called The Pontrix, one of my first major video projects. Wanting to top it, I started writing a script for a Lord of the Rings spoof, because they were coming out in theaters then. But as I wrote the story in script format, the characters weren't coming out like I wanted. So I decided to write it as a story. When I hit writer's block, I was up to 103 pages. That's 8 1/2 x 11, mind you. At some points, I really felt like I wasn't writing it. It was so interesting to see how my characters were coming about and the choices they were making, as if alive. But then, as I said, I hit a wall. I had pitched the video idea to the staff and was turned down due to inadequate resources. That blow took away any creativity and 4 years later, the cursor is still blinking in the place I left it.

And now here we are, National Novel Writing Month. What do you think? Should I give it another shot? To be honest, I'm not sure who my audience is here...though I know 3-4 regular readers. One of the magazine's suggests is to post the story on a blog as it is written. Would you be interested in reading it? I mean, yeah, it has some corny moments meant for teens, but I don't think it is that bad for a complete amateur writer, and I had a couple editors helping me along at the time. Not sure about the filming prospects anymore...the whole LOTR has worn off, but it could still be a fun read.
So the poll is out! You are my friends/family and I need your opinion! Should I try to finish it? Post the chapters on my blog in scheduled releases?

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