29th Oct 2006
NaNoWriMo
Let’s get one thing straight: I know Nanowrimo is a crazy idea. I’m going to do it anyway.
Now, is anyone else doing this? Because you could make Ms. Theologian your friend on Nanowrimo, where she currently has no friends. (You could also make her your friend on myspace, where she currently has 25 friends, roughly the same amount as other pariahs.)
Yes, I am committing to writing 1000-2000 words a day of a new novel for the month of November. And I’m also committing that the novel’s main characters will not be 17-20 years old because I’m really tired of being told I write YA. I realize that may involve a bit of a stretch for my emotional range, but I’m going to do it. I even made a very loose outline based on The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 
If you haven’t read this book, it’s a good one, but it will make you feel like a total hack for following such a prescriptive outline. On the other hand, it makes your story have a beginning, middle, end, and an arc. All good things. The basic flow is this
Act One
Ordinary World
Call to Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Meeting with the Mentor
Crossing the First Threshold
Act Two
Tests, Allies, Enemies
Approach to the Inmost Cave
Supreme Ordeal
Act Three
The Road Back
Resurrection
Return With Elixir
Now if I only knew what the elixir is and who the mentor is, I’d be all set.
