Jesper the Talking Hamster

Yesterday was also the time when I jumped onto the bandwagon that was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I've been writing for as long as ten years (none of them are published, thus the blog) and I hope I'll have no problem in completing the goal, which was a whopping 50,000 words in a month. Yeah.

Sounds like do-able? Not to most of us. Me, if the muse sits on my lap, I can do that under two weeks (no kidding). But if the muse kicks me in the loins and flits away, it can take me a month or two just to get to the next chapter.

I went to the forums and the writers there are very friendly! They gave a lot of advice to newbies (I am one) and told me that any kind of novel - be it fantasy, romance, or even erotica - is acceptable. So I set my mind on a strange one - a pseudobiography. Ever heard of that one?

I began toying with the idea years ago, when I first heard a programmatic music penned by none other than Antonio Vivaldi. It's a vivid description of the four seasons: spring, summer autumn, winter. With nothing more than a small orchestra and a first violin he created a very vivid description of these seasons, and the rest is history.

When I learnt that Vivaldi was actually ashmatic and hated winter days, what came to my mind while listening to the 'Winter' concerto was him travelling to the Ospedale something-something (I'll look it up later!) during winter after being sent away by a (imaginary) money-squandering bishop. That however, did not come true, although remnants of the story is still stuck inside my head somewhere.

This one, however, is more involving and more profound. I would like to finish it in time, or even earlier because this person has been my favorite, and his death is still debated until today. So I'd like to tell a story from my persepctive, what could have happened back then.

Wish me luck, and if you want to, you can also join in. You don't have to finish the novel you started though. Not many did, and there were no penalties in not finishing it. At least you did something, right?

It's a strange situation for me, though; after years of writing to an audience I never met, this time I am in company with writers who talk and advise each other. If you want to join, go to their website by typing down 'NaNoWriMo' on any search engine. Look out for the local forums; who knows, you have one near where you live.

Go novels!