I’m stuck in a weird place tonight. I have been for a few hours. I’m tired, and I don’t really have the ability to stay up past midnight actually getting any useful work done and still make it to work in the morning, but I also have such anticipation of the official start time that I’m feeling anxious. Like somehow at midnight it will all come to me and I’ll hammer out a novel in one night. Or .. I certainly don’t know what. I’ve been doing what I can to limit thinking ahead about what i want to do for my own novel for a few reasons. I was chatting with Sara earlier today, and I noticed that in her timezone, May was only 40 minutes away, while I still had to wait nearly 10 hours. She told me that she probably wouldn’t even get started for another 10 days (for the very reasonable explanation of “finals”), and I wasn’t sure what my reaction should be. I know I’m feeling cramped by a month already. Maybe because I haven’t been thinking ahead. Maybe because I finished Snow Crash today and found out that it had taken around three years to write.

Of course, MENoWriMo is not intended by for to churn out novels of the quality of Snow Crash. That book had crazy amounts of research folded into it. MENoWriMo novels should be nearly the antithesis of that work. We are talking about wordcount here, not research and quality. Wordcount. Still, I don’t know how safe it would be for me to try to take weeks off. Heck, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do about TV. Break out tapes and watch every show’s final 3-4 episodes after they air? I can’t do that entirely, since a lot of my favorite programming runs opposite my other favorite programs, sometimes three at a time. Yargh!

Only an hour and a half to go. I hope I can sleep. Maybe I should stay up, eat the rest of that Watermelon, and go to bed when I’ve relaxed. I thought about grabbing a book and reading it until I became tired, but then I worry that I will find myself writing like the author I’m reading. Then I think that that wouldn’t be too bad, but … I don’t know what to think. the sorts of things I’ve been reading lately, I’ll probably end up writing some very hard sci-fi. If you didn’t know sci-fi came in hard, then you’d probably not like hard sci-fi. I’m going to try to find something else to distract me from this.

Not money though. I’ll just stress out. I keep worrying that I won’t be able to afford to make all my payments or that I’ll end up paying too much in interest. I know I’m not in any sort of financial catastrophe, that I will certainly be able to pay all my bills, and that with the sort of debt I’ve gotten myself under the idea of “too much debt” is really just a matter of degrees. No need to worry. Worry won’t change anything. Only calm, rational planning can do any good where money is concerned. Calm and rational is not what I am right now, though. Else I’d be in bed hours ago.

I just started reading Snow Crash for the first time yesterday. I read about 100 pages yesterday afternoon, and another 30 so far this morning, and I’ve just figured out what Neal Stephenson’s idea was. Like … my mind … I … Neal Stephenson had a really interesting idea. Then he built on it and wrote a story and a world around it. Snow Crash is the book that that story became. I will definitely read the other 340 pages that he wrote; it’s well-written and compelling. Still, as I figured out the “big idea” he had (well before any of the characters revealed it in any clear way), I felt like there was no longer any reason for me to read the book.

I think that this sort of mindset is the other side of the reason I seem to have trouble writing in general, and may have trouble writing this novel next month: That once I’ve got the “big idea” nailed down and understood, I’m done. I recently wrote down a couple of “big ideas” that I had, and … That was that. I remember thinking to myself that if I could extend either of these ideas to create a fully-detailed world (which I think I can), then maybe I could take a peek into that world and find a story and write that story. Except … I haven’t. Maybe I will in May.

I found a little problem with how the Main ME page sorts recently commented on entries, and now I get to modify the code of two or three dozen pages! Hooray!

I know, I know. I’m awake now. I could be cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, taking out the trash, doing my laundry… Instead I’m working on things on my computer that need updating. I’m posting to my blog. I’m tracking what I eat in another blog. I’m balancing my checkbook in Quicken. I’m drawing a new comic strip. I’m listening to the CDs I got from Burn, Baby Burn.

Actually, I’m going to bed soon. I need to be able to wake up in the morning. Makes it a lot easier to get to work on time, I find. Maybe I’ll post about my feelings tomorrow.

So recently I mentioned briefly that I am planning on writing a novel in a month. This was inspired by National Novel Writing Month, a project I may or may not be able to participate in when November finally rolls around, but which I appreciate and encourage you to take a look into. I encourage you to take a look into it, because I’m going to be mirroring it here/at Modern Evil in the month of May. There are a variety of reasons for choosing May, the easiest to explain is that it’s 6 months removed from NaNoWriMo. And I have been recently informed (no, I don’t look at calendars much) that May even has one more day than November to try to get your novel done.

That’s right. Your novel. I want you to join me. I already have several people who will be writing novels in the month of May, and I want to get as many people involved as possible. It’ll be a Modern Evil Novel Writing Month. I’ve just created a new discussion forum on the subject, so we can all share tales of our progress/writer’s block and how trying to write a novel is interfering with our lives. I’m considering creating blog-like pages for people to post their work as they write it (if they like), and I’m thinking of contacting the people behind the real NaNoWriMo to let them know what we’re doing here.

If you’re too lazy to actually go to the NaNoWriMo website and read their FAQ, their extended FAQ, and their further extended FAQ, I’ll lay out the basic guidelines for you here:

1. People looking to write classy, complex novels should not participate. People looking to get extensive feedback and people who take their writing very seriously should also go elsewhere.
2. Start writing not before 00:00:01 local time, Wednesday, May 1st.
3. Write a novel of at least 50,000 words by 23:59:59 local time, Friday, May 31st.
4. All participants must be working on the same deadline.
5. You cannot write one word 50,000 times. That is neither novel, nor a novel.
6. 50,000 words is not a limit, it is a goal. If your story requires more words, write them!
7. Outlines are encouraged. Notes are encouraged. Partially written chapters are punishable by death.
8. Take a look at these tips and strategy for getting a novel done in a month.

That pretty much covers the guidelines and conveys the mood of what we’re trying to do here. “NaNoWriMo is all about the magical power of deadlines. Give someone a goal and a goal-minded community and miracles are bound to happen. Pies will be eaten at amazing rates. Sheep will be herded like never before. And novels will be written in a month.” (from the NaNoWriMo website) MENoWriMo is about the same things, but it is also about being too impatient to wait for November and turning Modern Evil’s most avid readers into novelists.

Anyone who emails me a completed novel of 50,000 words or more by 00:00:01 Saturday, June 1st will have the opportunity to have it hosted on Modern Evil, or just read by a friend. In fact, I’ll gladly send my completed novel to anyone who sends me theirs, well in advance of putting any of them online. More importantly, anyone who completes a novel before June 1st will have a personal sense of satisfaction that comes from having been part of this whole thing, and having written your own novel.

I can’t think of anything else to say about this right now, but feel free to email me at teel@modernevil.com if you’re interested in joining us, have any questions, or just wanted to express your dissatisfaction with the way I live my life.