Skip to main content

NaNoWriMo 2006 - Shifting Into Gear.

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow! That's just 12 hours away...

I participated in last year's NaNoWriMo. Even went to the meet they had organised in MPH 1 Utama. But my efforts sizzled pretty quickly as work took over my life. But thanks to a different job and a lifestyle change this year, I'm pretty confident I can make the 50k mark this time round.

Phew! 50,000 words. The number almost leaves breathless every time I think of it.

Hey, it's just, you know, words.

Anyway, I've decided that I won't be writing the usual angsty stuff I usually write in my short stories and will be aiming for a novel with a science fiction/young adult persuasion. One that doesn't require me to think too much. Plot driven, rather than character driven. Something that would most likely fit in the mass market.

My influences would most likely be... er... lemme list 'em: The Hungry City Chronicles, The BFG, Snow Crash, Eberron, The Golden Compass (but not the rest of the His Dark Materials books), Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, Hayao Miyazaki's early movies (think Castle of Cogliostro, Nausicaa, Laputa... and not Totoro) and - yikes! - Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Anyway, that's the plan, but I'm not sticking to it. I'm letting the characters tell their story. Here's hoping I make it out alive with 50k words at the end of November.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown31/10/06 2:36 pm

    I'm still undecided as to whether I should jump on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon this year, but if I don't start in a week, I might probably let this year slip. Never finished the last two years either.

    So all the best with your NaNoWrimoing!!!!

    And if you're combining Phillip Pullman with Hideki Anno and C.S. Lewis, your story should be a heck of a read. :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ted Mahsun31/10/06 2:50 pm

    Why think about it? Why not start anyway, then if you can't continue, don't. At least you'd have tried... and who knows something might come out of it...

    But thanks anyway! I hope you join in!

    I would've liked to combine Kareshi Kanojyo no Jijyo too, but I think that would've made the story too bizarre...

    Anyway, I'm just citing them as influences or perhaps, I should say, inspiration. The final product could be totally, TOTALLY different. Eeks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Artemis Hunt31/10/06 7:40 pm

    Ted you are back! Can't log in for 1 day and I've already missed so much.

    I suppose writing 50K words is great, but I hope it won't zap too much of your energy. That's a whole novel in there!

    ReplyDelete
  4. sharkgila31/10/06 7:53 pm

    good luck teds! I'll be watching that words-meter you got at the sidebar

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ted Mahsun1/11/06 10:45 am

    Xeus: I think I will be very much close to dead at the end of November... but I think it will be worth it to have a completed novel!

    Sharks: Thanks! I'm watching it too... got a daily target to meet :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. bibliobibuli1/11/06 1:50 pm

    you've made a great start ted. i found that the trick was to always try to keep slightly ahead of the word limit so that you have some words spare for emergency days when you are busy or don't feel so good.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ted Mahsun1/11/06 2:15 pm

    Thanks Sharon, I'll keep that in mind. Am totally stoked I've got all these words written down but am a little worried I'll lose steam half-way...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm going to Clarion West!

So yeah! I'm going to Clarion West this year! If you didn't know, Clarion West is a really awesome science fiction and fantasy writing workshop that runs for six weeks in summer every year at Seattle and is usually taught by a faculty of award-winning authors and editors. Many students who attend this workshop also go on to have illustrious writing careers of their own too. I've been meaning to attend this workshop (or its sister workshop, Clarion UCSD, which is the original Clarion workshop but runs in San Diego around the same time) for years now but never had the courage to apply. Many reasons as to why: didn't think I'd have money for the most part, didn't think I was good enough, didn't think I could leave work long enough, didn't think I could leave family behind, etc. But something sparked inside of me late last year. I felt I should at least give it a go this time round. So I did. They requested a sample of my best work and an applicatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dedicated by Burgess.

I've been wanting to blog this for ages, but I've never managed to make the scanner work properly... that is till now. Some years back, my dad was browsing the shelves of NovelHut, Ipoh's best second-hand bookstore, and found a copy of Anthony Burgess's Time for a Tiger . Price? RM2. (That would be approximately USD$0.60 or GBP£0.30). Did I mention it was a hardcover first edition? Here's the dedication page, with the famous dedication written in Jawi. Jawi is the Malay language written in Arab script, a norm early last century. Nowadays, Malay is written in Romanised form. The dedication says: " Kepada sahabat-sahabat saya di Tanah Melayu " which translates into "To my friends in Malaya." On the opposite page, proof this is the first edition. A first edition is probably valuable by itself. But this copy has something extra that makes it even more special--a personal dedication by Burgess himself to a friend: If you can't make the writing out...
15 comments
Read more

REVIEW: Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

UPDATE: My Wind/Pinball review can be found here . ISBN: n/a Publisher: n/a Paperback: 160 pages In Murakami fan circles, simply owning a copy of Pinball, 1973 is a mark of hardcore-ness. Like Hear the Wind Sing before it, Haruki Murakami does not allow English translations of Pinball, 1973 to be published outside of Japan. Back in the 80s, Alfred Birnbaum translated it into English and Kodansha published it as a novel for Japanese students who wanted to improve their English. While the English edition of Hear the Wind Sing continues to be reprinted and sold in Japan (and available for a moderate sum via eBay, see my review ), Kodansha stopped its reprint runs of the English edition of Pinball, 1973 and has now become a collector's item, fetching vast amounts of money on auction sites and reseller stores. Last time I checked, the cheapest copy went for USD$2500. Of course, Murakami addicts or the curious can always download a less than legal PDF of the book, painst...
18 comments
Read more