National Novel Writing Month: Part The Second

It's day 20. Ten days remain in the contest and I'm, at the moment of this writing, not even halfway through my book. 24871 words strong - I'm close to half, no bones about it - this is still an achievement for me. I work 40 hours a week, I have a small social life, I have a PS3 that regularly requires my attention, much like a child, and yet I'm still going pretty strong. According to the NaNoWriMo website, I only need to write about 2,500 words a day to actually complete the book on time (assuming my book completes at 50K, which is does not seem so [however, at 50K I'm a winner, finished or not in my book ]) which isn't impossible. I've been polishing off about 3,000 every day, a little more when I write in my notebook at 826NYC on tuesdays.

I'm really happy with the direction the novel is headed in. I've tweaked bits and pieces, I've added and removed bits and pieces and, though it will still require heavy editing, content-wise I confident I have a good piece of work in front of me.

If you read the excerpt from Part the First, you're probably awash with curiosities and a deep interest in the happenings thus far. Provided is another snippet to whet your appetite for more of The Captain.

National Novel Writing Month: Part The First

So I didn't want to wait until twelve days into writing to inform you all in blog-world about the serious endeavor I'm undertaking. National Novel Writing Month is a month-long celebration of writing in which participants write 50,000 word novels before midnight November 30th. Seeings how I've recently been writing more as of late, with both a novel and a graphic novel miniseries in the works (more on these as they develop), I didn't mind putting that all on hold to torture myself for 30 days.

Between working 40 hours a week, volunteering at 826NYC on tuesdays, my only day off, and having a strong social/drinking life of course adding writing a novel with deadlines is the logical and responsible thing to do to my sanity.

Needless to say it's november 12th, I should be at 20,000 words today and I'm instead at 10,855 and steadily growing as I write this. I'm stressing over this a lot, but I'm still loving the experience. I'm constantly thinking about what to write, putting off video games and sleep to continue working. I plan on catching up with my word count this weekend (with only breaks for football, of course) in between.

As far as the book goes, I don't have a title yet, but it's classified under Satire/Humor/Parody which if you've read my entries here that about covers it.
I won't go into too much detail of what it's about, but there's an excerpt after the jump:

Forgotten Futures

Lauren (over at Hello, You are not here) shot me a link to this flash fiction contest over at New Scientist.

For those of you who are unaware, Flash Fiction is a "genre" of writing that isn't very long (hence the "flash" part).

Having taken a college course on this, I can tell you it's pretty stupid.
I personally don't believe fiction should have boundaries, I don't think one should limit one's self to a specific length (and therein syntax, dialogue/exposition/plot limitations) because, in the end, fiction should write itself. You should never struggle to get something out, never tell yourself you have too many words, or force yourself to choose one specific word over some unnecessarily long and wordy paragraph.

In the spirit of the contest, however, I took the challenge and wrote one up using the 350 word count as a plot device rather than a limitation.

The contest was called 'Forgotten Futures', or how the present looked like "The Future" to the past. Think "The War of the Worlds and Nineteen Eighty-Four as masterpieces of speculative literature, but have somehow or other lapsed into obscurity. Each is a forgotten vision of the future."

At least, that's how I interpreted the task:

Hormonally Vivid Excitations

Gretchen woke up hungover, wrapped in a large quilt. She scratched her head, trying as hard as she could to recall what had happened the night before, but the last thing she remembered was stumbling out of the apartment of the black guy she let fuck her in the ass because she's menstruating and let's face it, pregnancy sucks.

Memo: When I Become a Super-powered Individual

Since most of the good superpowers have been taken...and we all know that making some second-rate superhero with first-rate abilities never works out (I'm looking at you SubMariner), I've decided to list all the abilities I'm willing to have.

Note to DC and Marvel: If I see any of these in print, Fuck you, I'm suing.