On Being a Trusty Sidekick: My Adventures in Paranormal and Conspiracy Investigation

An excerpt is up at the nanowrimo site http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/128657 and the novel contains: SF0, Easter Island, a baby giant octopus, grape bubble gum, tarot card readings, and a brain safety protest involving 50 people dressed up as hot dogs. The entire novel is downloadable free from http://www.lulu.com/content/1557419. (I've also attached it to this write-up.)

Lately, I've been distracted from SF0 by an online roleplaying game where I play Xenophilius Lovegood (nicknamed Zen) from the Harry Potter universe. But I've missed SF0, and wanted to integrate as many of my obsessions as possible in the same place. So a 2007 NaNoWritMo novel incorporating SF0, Zen, and Easter Island seemed like a good project for the month.

It's strange to document writing a novel---I mean, the end product is sort of self-documenting. But since there aren't that many people who really want to read 51,000 words of amateur writing, here's a summary of what happened during the writing process, pieced together from various emails and postings.

early October I emailed a friend saying "I'm not really thinking about NaNoWriMo this year. I guess having done it was neat, but I might not be interested enough in writing to do another big chunk of it."

October 16 I was considering it. "I'm kind of tempted to do NaNoWriMo again this year, but just not sure I want to spend the time and effort. I guess last year I had thought it would be fun to do with a bunch of other people, but it didn't turn out to be quite as sociable of an undertaking as I'd expected, plus about half the people I knew who were doing it dropped out pretty early. (I know, I know, obviously I never actually tried writing anything before, if I had the mistaken impression that novel writing might be a particularly sociable activity.)"

November 3 I was hooked. "Ok, I'm in for writing... This year, I'm going to be writing about adventures with an imaginary friend. Sticking again to the real-world universe, Boston area setting, and very short chapters format... It already seems somewhat harder than last year, so I have bought a set of fish and other ocean life themed stickers. Each day I write, I'll add another sticker to my computer."

November 5 I started having doubts. "I don't like my story for this year as much as last year's, so far. I deliberately made two major changes (1) don't have nearly the entire thing take place in an office (2) try to have a smaller cast of characters. I don't think either of those are the problem. I just haven't been able to get the silliness level/ridiculousity for this year's effort high enough yet."

November 9 I decided I needed more motivation than fish stickers could provide, so I asked for the SF0 task to be unretired. Now I'd have to write a novel, right? And I could feature SF0 in the story to boost the fun and coolness level.

November 12th My first day of complete non-writing. "Yesterday I failed to do any nano writing at all, but did go to the Peabody Essex Museum. The origami exhibit was fun. I particularly like one piece where the paper had been folded to look like wickerwork type weaving and then pushed out so that faces were emerging from the woven texture. Clearly I must now work extreme origami into the novel. Still forging forward---because Friday and Saturday were extra productive nano-wise, I'm still on schedule for the month."

November 14 I reached the halfway mark. "Still churning out on schedule (my goal has been 2000 words a day, because the holidays and end of the month might get problematic). So I've passed the half-way mark to the nano goal of 50,000. Things are indeed getting a bit strange, but at the same time not strange enough. (For example, yesterday's text included a suspected chupacabra sighting that turned out to be a due to a pig with TSE and introduced a woman who believes her husband was abducted by aliens.) Given that, and the fact that my favorite episode from last year's novel was the jinxed guy getting attacked by squirrels, I can't figure out what is causing this sneaking feeling that I might not have adequate goofiness. Perhaps I need to add squid?" My friends advised me to add crazed, mind-controlling nanorobots.

November 15 I made the tactical error of reading a friend's novel excerpt. A friend who is much, much better at writing than I am. "I think you're totally right that NaNoWriMo works best with something lighthearted. I liked your excerpt, although I have to admit it gave me a slight feeling like 'why am I writing fiction maybe I should stick to proposals because I can't do stuff like this. wah.' But, you know, in a way it's like living in a house with a bad paint job on the outside. If you're the one in the house, you don't have to look at it. So being a bad writer is ok with me, since I'm not going to be trying to read the output! Or something. You know, it's funny that you mention mad cow disease there because I just wrote an episode that's kind of related to that. But no zombies. One suspected case of fairy vomit, but it turns out to be bubble gum."

November 24 "Hit 44K Thursday morning, but didn't write at all on Friday because we spent two days with relatives. The combination of having the television on and listening to them talk and doing nothing but eat was strangely hypnotic but also sapped me of all creative energy. I've resolved to get back into it today because I think if I let it go for two days in a row, I'm just going to fizzle completely."

November 25 "Bouncing back from Thanksgiving, I've finished with about a thousand extra words."

November 26 But wait, this task specifies writing a novel in exactly one month. I am still several days short! Must do some editing, and maybe a cover illustration. And I should check the chapter headings to make sure they are at least marginally related to what happens.

November 30 Well, a couple days of editing was probably a good thing. Found a ton of spelling errors, and some places where a character's name changed partway through. And I like the front cover a lot.