Friday, October 21, 2011

Help for NaNoWriMo

It's almost November, and you know what that means. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. It's when tens of thousands of writers throw caution to the wind and attempt to write a 50,000-word story in a single month.

It's not as crazy as it sounds, but it isn't easy.

My plans are to try something new. I normally write contemporary YA fantasy. I'll stick with fantasy, but change the audience and time period. It'll be good practice and a good break from editing.

The problem is that I have two stories I want to write and I can only do one of them, so here's were you come in. I've written a blurb for each story below. In the comments tell me which one you think sounds the best and why. I'll write whichever wins. I'll also try to post story updates on my blog as I go through the month.

Blurb #1:
The Norse God, Thor, decides to take a long-overdue vacation, and he leaves his mighty hammer in the care of his great, great, great, are-you-still-reading-all-of-these, great, great grandson, Arthur Quirkelsteen, the smallest boy in his fourth-grade class. Arthur first tries to fly to school, but misses it by three states. Then he ruins his class service project--who knew the hammer would refuse to drive nails? But when his secret is discovered by the cafeteria lady he must keep the hammer safe until his great, great, great, he-is-pretty-great, great grandfather returns.
Blurb #2:
Elizabeth stands in the balance between an immoral peace and a war with the gods. She believes in the old gods--creatures who feed on human souls and grant fantastic powers to their followers, but she is also the daughter of a famous industrialist--a man who uses human labor, machines and money to build empires. Will she support the continued sacrifices to appease the gods? Or the slavery enforced by the industrialists? Or will her actions start a war that could spell the end of her society?
Leave a comment below and tell me which one you like better.

* You gotta wonder how long that place has been looking for help. I hope you guys step up and send help a little faster. It made a great picture for Brenda Gottsabend. You can find it on Flickr.

5 comments:

Cathy said...

I gotta go with Arthur taking care of grandpa's hammer. There's got to be some great humor in there somewhere and John, I think you are just the man to do it.

Hogan's Hero's Swim School said...

I vote for the first one, so funny

Jordan McCollum said...

Tough choice! I lean toward the second one, because I'm more likely to be in that audience. But I don't think you can go wrong.

John Waverly said...

Thanks for the feedback.

Cathy & Cindy - Humor is one one of the aspects of the experiment. I don't know if I'll be good at it, but I want to try.

Jordan - I know! I'm totally torn between these two stories. I've even had people suggest that I write both of them, then combine the word count for Nanowrimo. I'm not going to do that, I think it would short circuit my brain.

Danyelle Ferguson said...

I totally vote for the middle grade about Arthur! =)

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