Saturday, November 01, 2008

160: NaNoWriMo 2008

I'm gonna try to use the month of November (officially known as National Novel Writing Month) to try to get even further on my novel.  It's not really working out very good as I haven't written on it since June or so.  I'm hoping NaNoWriMo will give me the push I need to try to get past the second part.  I'm also trying to get my short story End Road finished by the end of the week.

In other novel writing news, I went to see Michael Chabon at the University of Kansas on Monday to hear him give a lecture.  He talked about how kids are not free to run wild anymore because of technology and fear of child predators.  Even things from his childhood, like Legos, aren't as amazing because they are now made to be put together in a certain way.  It was really informative and interesting because I agreed with it a lot.  I try to give my son some freedom to do whatever.  When he was asked about child abductors, Chabon answered with "that's always happened, it just never made it on national television" which I completely agree with.  Children have been disappearing since forever and statistics show that it's no worse now than it was back in 1970s, there just wasn't a TV crew filming it or Nancy Grace yelling about how all men are depraved perverts.

The next day I went to a more laid back conversation with him where he just took random questions from the audience and was very informative about his writing process and how he comes up with ideas.  It was all this that really made me think about furthering my education which is something I've been trying to do for the last year or so.  His talk also made me want to really sit down and write and with NaNoWriMo here, maybe I can get some writing and editing done.

For NaNoWriMo, I'm gonna try to get my second novel, Wilbur and Kolak, halfway written which means I have to edit parts one and two and actually finish part two.  I'm hoping to actually get a couple chapters posted here to prove that I am really writing it.  Please join us novel writers at www.nanowrimo.org and check it out.