NaNoWriMo 2013: Week 2

It’s November, and after taking off last year from the National November Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this year I am glued to my computer nearly every day in an attempt to reach 50,000 words in one month. I’m working hard to make writing more of a career than ever before. I have scheduled 5 days a week where I write or doing writing related activities, and 2 days I spend with my family. Since I work a full time job on top of writing and family, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for much else in life.

I know my gaming buddies miss me and someday I hope to return to Azeroth or wherever the RPG gamers are hanging out then… yeah everyone eventually returns to Azeroth if they are serious Role Players. Admitting there is an addiction is the first step to recovery, but Marilyn Manson once said that “Rehab is for quitters” and I’m no quitter, so I will just delay embracing my Azeroth addiction until I have more free time. Luckily I can squeeze in some fantasy football on the weekends and I give myself a couple hours during the week to tweak my teams. If you don’t know what Azeroth is, then just Google it, you’ll recognize it then by its game name. The game, not the book by Cherryh.

Getting back to Nano, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, then you already know I’m diving into this year with a new story that I’ve blogged and chatted about on occasion. It’s a fan fiction piece mashing Terminator and Back to the Future into one story. I first got the idea after watching an animated movie trailer of the concept on YouTube. After a couple of years of rolling the idea around in my head, I finally came up with a way to make it work. So now the first draft is in production right now! So far I’m enjoying it, it’s raw, but first drafts always are. I’m hoping I can bust through the 50,000 word goal using this story and then I’ll probably edit it down to something much smaller. Like a short story of about 35,000 words (which equals just over 100 pages).

My work on the cover so far!

I sketched a cover for the little fan fiction piece and now I’m drawing it digitally with my computer. So far I’ve only got Michael J Fox’s face, and next week I’ll do a little more work and post it with the next update. The idea for the cover is the typical Back to the Future movie poster with the Delorean and Michael stepping into it. In addition, I sketched Arnold in his typical Terminator outfit standing behind Michael with a shotgun pointing up. I’m not a real artist though and I have no expectations for this being anything but a funny cover. It’ll get some laughs and that’s about it.

Once the book is finished, edited, polished a little, and the cover is complete, I’ll set it up somewhere online as a free downloadable PDF. I thought about a MOBI or some other format, but I don’t want anyone to get any ideas that I’m selling this thing. It’s just a fun project that I would love to share once I’m done.

Now I need to get back to writing. I've got about 3,000 words I want to write today. Have an awesome week everyone!