I have never completed a Nanowrimo project, despite my attempts at trying. (To be fair, I have never completed a long form original work ever. Also, I can’t do deadlines because Anxiety.) And yet, the idea of “write an entire novel in a month” calls to me. “Yes, it would be great if I could do that! I’m sure this time I won’t completely fail because something came up and I get derailed!” I say like someone who always has something come up, and always gets derailed. And yet again, it’s almost November, and I have an urge to attempt writing in Nanowrimo.
Here are some attempted Nanowrimo Projects:
The Project That Was An Offshoot of Someone Else’s Paracosm
I got a lot of story ideas based off of someone else’s Paracosm and was allowed to write in it. I have made multiple attempts to “file off the serial numbers” so my Original Characters from that paracosm could be in their own stories. I have been largely unsuccessful because some of the worldbuilding and back story were…problematic for a variety of reasons. There is no way I can fix the problems and I no longer have the notes or stories from that paracosm. (Also I am very much not friends with that person anymore.) The plot of the story I was working on for the Nano project went something like: An Inconvenient Princess is rescued from being violently removed from the succession by a being who owed the princess’ father a favor. I have no idea where to go from there. I need to create a world that isn’t the ex-friend’s paracosm first. And have a better idea of where I was going with the story. I maybe got 15000 words into this project.
The Creepy Vacation Home in the Woods Project
This is an idea I’ve had off and on for years, but which has never fleshed itself out. It’s intended to be a real-world-setting fantasy. (Not urban because it doesn’t take place in the city.) The Protagonist is a guy who disappeared as a teenager and reappeared a year later. He ends up going to his family’s vacation home in order to clean it out/get it ready for a family reunion. It turns out that when he was a teenager, he ended up in another world, portal fantasy style. And now something happened, and someone from the other world is attempting to contact him. This didn’t get very far because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with anything and I am very weak in “real-world-fantasy” setting format. I’d like to try working on it again, but it needs a major rewrite. And also a better title. The title I picked was not the best. (And no, it wasn’t The Creepy Vacation Home in the Woods.)
Eldritch Rhythm
This is another “real world setting” fantasy. This also got horribly stalled because of my being weak in “how does the real world work anyway?” knowledge. This story is vaguely related to a fan fic, though all of the serial numbers have been successfully filed off. So! Our Protagonist is a High Priestess who abdicated from her position to pursue a career as a pop singer. The problem is a) you cannot actually stop being a priestess of Mysterious Elder Gods. b) there is a mutual beef between Our Protagonist’s people and various occultists who either try to join her or defeat her nefarious plans. c) demon hunters also trying to defeat her nefarious plans. (There are no nefarious plans except to be in the Top 40.) The basic plot: Our Heroine is performing and a demon hunter turns up. She defeats the demon hunter, who it turns out, is having a Family Situation. (The family situation is that the demon hunter is going it alone because their family has disowned them.) Demon hunter’s apartment has been broken into and Family hunting manuals have been stolen, plus a lot of information the demon hunter was gathering about Our Protagonist. Our Protagonist is not pleased, but decides to help the hunter get the notebooks back. This got horribly stalled because I don’t know how “calling the police about an open door and an obviously ransacked apartment” works. And also How Music Career is Formed.
The Retired War Machine and the Sorcerer’s Daughter Project
This is the project I currently want to work on. This is basically an isekai/portal fantasy. This is about an AI assault vehicle (with a number of mobile units) who has retired from combat because of the Apocalypse. (It was not a robo-apocalypse to be clear. It was a “infrastructure and society collapse” apocalypse. The AIs are trying to stop it, and it’s not going super well!) Our Protagonist is summoned to another world by a sorcerer. The sorcerer thinks Our Protagonist is a demon, but this is not the case! The sorcerer is not able to control the Protagonist, and ends up binding it. Our Protagonist gets found by the sorcerer’s daughter, and befriends her. When a war starts up between the sorcerer and a rival, Our Protagonist ends up rescuing the daughter and going off into the wilds. Most of what I’ve come up with is “homesteading and fighting off wild animals while making friends with the locals who are hiding from the sorcerer kings.”) Working title is going to be something like “Hana’s Demon.”
I have done a lot of worldbuilding/planning for this story! I have no idea if I’m going to try following the rough outline I’ve written yet or if I’m going to go off in some other direction. (The danger with me writing outlines is that I don’t always end up following them.) We will see if I can get this story off the ground in November.
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