Wednesday, October 30, 2013

See you in December

It's the most wonderful time of the writing year! By which I mean NaNo. I've got a nice clean notebook for unplugged productivity (like when I'm on the subway or waiting to go into a a movie). A new Scrivener project has been named and stocked with ideas. And my counter widget is up on this site, the critical tool that forces me to sit down and write whether or not I feel like it!

You might think it counter-productive to put a 1-month hold on a work in progress to start on something new, but consider that both the current WIP and "The Upsilon Knot" began as NaNo projects. NaNo forces me to plunge into the thick of a story, with no time for hesitation or puttering around. The work pours out; a lot of it is even usable. The charge I get from this is well, well worth the exhaustion.

This November, I'll be diving into a future world that revealed itself while I was watching the lunchtime foot traffic near the Flatiron building. Hey, inspiration can find you anywhere -- even on the Shake Shack line!

Thursday, October 3, 2013

and they are us

You know those dystopic novels all the kids are reading? Ever wonder what happened a few generations before page 1? Maybe something like this: government shutdown by fundamentalist minority; rising civilian gun violence; erratic weather; increasing percentage of immune disorders; decline in goods production; gambling-based economy; erosion of stabilizing middle class creating an unbreachable divide in the citizenry... On the bright side, one of you may be the 3x-great grandparent of the teen-aged girl who's going to save the future.