nanowrimo_lj | Another NaNo Intro. (Reply)

Hi, all. I'm Naamah, this will be my first official NaNo. Just ducking in to say hi a few days before the torture begins, and giving you a chance to get to know my by sharing with you a primal scream of terror and pain:

This is just stupid.

I have my novel plotted out minutely. It's a cheesy space-opera/science-fantasy sequel to a book I wrote earlier this year, very much in the vein of Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books.

This is my novel, man. I'm committed to it. I'm all revved up, ready to lay down rubber with some 12-cylinder whoopass. I have a jungle moon, giant bug people, hot red-skinned girls, six-legged panthers, ray guns, flying ships, an evil space dominatrix, and a hero from Texas. Come on, people, what more do you want? This is the Baskin Robbins of pulp adventure: 31 flavors of cheese! There is something here for everyone.

So. Here I sit, poised to dive into the frothing foam of my imagination's raging currents. I'm ready to take the plunge, ride those whitewater rapids, and come out on day 31 with 50,000 words of soggy, unmarketable crap clutched weakly to my chest.

What happens?

I start getting the Wandering Eye. Like a nervous groom the week before the wedding, I'm ogling every other plot in sight, wondering if it wouldn't be better in the mental sack than what I'm about to commit myself to for the next month.

I'd just dismiss it as random jitters, but in the past three days, a full-blown plot has emerged from the bushes, snuck in through a carelessly open window, and ambushed me in my sleep. Now I am tied to a chair while this hunky vampire guy tells me his un-life story. As hostage situations go, this one is pretty cool. He's not mounting to show dominance or peeing in the corners or anything. But it could escalate at any moment. In three more days, I could be lying on my back, writhing and leaking in submission like a badly-housebroken puppy while he rearranges my mental furniture to Feng Shui his inner itch and raids my fridge for lime Jell-o and instant pudding.

Sure, I could kick him off the couch, yank the remote out of his hand, and go back to watching my regularly scheduled novel on my internal TV while munching yummy plot nachos, but I'm afraid if I dip my pen into the viscous, plasticlike Velveeta of cheesy sci-fantasy goodness, I will discover that Tortured Hero has moved on for parts unknown while I wasn't looking. (Not that it would be hard to find him again. That Cloud Of Doom over his head is pretty visible.)

To make things worse, like toe-biting rats in some Godforsaken third-world country, other bits and pieces of stories are starting to creep out of the shadows, and if I don' t pay attention, they might overwhelm me. These are Porn Rats, too. If I let them bite me, instead of rabies or the Plague, they will infect my with the incurable compulsion to write lots of disgusting, squelching group sex scenes broken only by witty banter and swordfighting. Sometimes all three simultaneously.

Why, oh why does this happen now when I am less than a week from beginning something different? Something I'd been planning on for weeks and weeks?

In other news, I NEED a NaNo icon SO badly, and I don't want to use one that everyone else has. I want one that's mine, all mine. So it's off to Photoshop with me.

Might as well, while I'm tied to this freakin' chair.

Thank you, and goodnight.