Its the end of November a time that I prepare for mentally every year. Thanksgiving is one of the most traumatic days of the year for me. Only Christmas and Valentines Day are worse. As a result, November, in general, is not a month I look towards favorably.
However, there is one thing that has kept me occupied during these trying times. This one major distraction is called National Novel Writing Month or "NaNoWriMo" for short. This special event happens through the entire month of November each year. It captivates me to write every single day which is the type of motivation I need to survive this harsh month.
The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in one month or 1667 words on average a day for all of November. For many people, this means creating an entire novel in one month. However, the stories I tend to weave are much longer than 50,000. In fact, last year I wrote part of a Dark Fantasy Novel titled "The Messiah of Nightmares" and even now it remains incomplete. This is not because it was not written during NaNo. In fact, the story just became massive.
Messiah of Nightmares is part of a dark epic fantasy series of my own design, and it is a genre that is called epic for a reason. The average word count of such stories tends to approach even 200,000. NaNoWriMo barely even dented such a massive undertaking. Though, I will admit that if not for me focusing on a different project this year, that novel's first draft would be finished by now.
For this years NaNoWriMo event, I choose to create another story. Unrelated to the first, the genre is post-apocalyptic with elements of science fiction. I am challenging myself this time around by writing a protagonist who falls under the LGBTQ spectrum and is female. Meanwhile, I am a straight male writer. Heavy research was required before I even began writing the first page. Assuming I do things correctly, I think that research will pay off with an incredible tale.
The story is titled Earth Everafter and is part of a trilogy of tales set in a bleak world after an Armageddon more than 200 years prior devastated the earth. I am using the characters in this tale to showcase my feelings on the politically unstable climate as well as the massive disparity between rich and poor. There are magically inclined humans called Mutants and one of the central conflicts in the story is whether the same laws can be applied to two different groups of people.
As with any story I write, nothing truly what it seems. I can't wait to see what this story inspired by NaNoWriMo will be like when it is completed. And with less than 10,000 to go and a week to accomplish it, failure is not an option. My sanity to get through the end of this month as it leads into the much crueler December depends on it.
