How Do You Come Up With Your Ideas For NaNoWriMo?

I’m coming up with my idea as I write it.

In August my plot was a ghost circus comes to town. . . my town of course.

By September it was Jack Frost moved into (my) town and took over.

By October it was Jack Frost and a Frost Zombie apocalypse that after decimating my town, where now taking over the world.

On Halloween night I logged in here at 7PM and than went on Twitter and did a count down all over the world – It was like New Years Eve – watching folks in New Zealand shout out that midnight hit; than Australia folks started screaming it was midnight, and it just keep going on like that – I started getting really freaked out when the UK folks started writing, because I’m on the Eastern most point of the USA and that meant I was next in line to start screaming midnight. At midnight I was logged in and typing and freaking out and I did not get any sleep last night at all because once I hit 1667, I rushed back to Twitter and was shouting out word counts with every one else. OMG! Twitter and NaNo at the same time is so much fun. and Twitter and NaNo at midnight all over the world is just amazing!

I had my plot all ready to go – outlined, character bios, world created – spent 2 months writing it all up, was all excited and ready to go. Than midnight strikes and I start writing a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT plot all together!

I stayed up all night (seeing how it was Halloween) watching Bela Lugosi movies. The Devil Bat ended at 12:13 and I started writing and before I realized what I was doing I found myself writing Bela Lugosi/Dracula fan-fic instead of my plot! Now I had no plot, no characters (except Bela Lugosi), no world created, and yet, here I am writing away at the seat of my pants with no idea where it’s going, and I’m actually liking it and it’s surprisingly really good – damn good! YAY! I may have something worth publishing when I get done!

So now I’m coming up with my idea as I write it. And I have no idea what I’ll write until I write it. Which is sort of fun, because it’s like a big adventure trying to guess what I’m going to write next. With no plot or outline to lead me, I’m just sort of jumping all over the place and having a blast.

At the moment, I’ve got vampires taking over my home town. Do you notice a trend here? No matter what plot I go with, it always ends up with the bad guy raising hell in my home town. I know why too – a few years back a real crime lord moved to Old Orchard Beach, got himself hired as town manager, and really did raise hell here in town, messed up a lot of folks lives, and than he disappeared when the FBI showed up to investigate him. My family was one of the ones who messed up bad, ( http://www.squidoo.com/OnBeingHomeless2 ) because he had plans to build a set of condos on our farm and we absolutely refused to sell and he took to all sorts of weird acts of terror to try to get us off our land. We went through 9 years of hell, including 2 years of being homeless after someone set fire to our house. The whole event had a really big impact on my writing and after the fire in 2006 you saw a change in my books – namely that since 2006, everything I write now involves a bad guy moving to Old Orchard Beach and making life miserable for the locals. So, it’s no surprise that once I started writing this year’s NaNoWriMo that same theme showed up as my plot.

I’m weird, but I set my novel in my hometown Old Orchard Beach, Maine, partly because I know this town so well that it’s easy to write about, and partly because it’s the absolute LAST place you’d expect Bela Lugosi to be hiding out 60 years after he faked his death.

As stated in my profile title my story is about Bela Lugosi (though he’s really only a cameo character in my book), who 60 years after his “reported” death, has moved into an abandoned house next door to 3 kids (who are the main characters).

Bela Lugosi, who is not really dead, is hiding out in a tiny coastal town in Maine, only he’s using the name from one of his movies: Dr Laouse. Dr. Laouse was a character who in the movie turned out to be Dracula masquerading as a mad scientist.

In my book, the kids, now suspect that Dr Laouse, is in fact the actor Bela Lugosi, and that he’s not dead, because he’s one of the undead, and he really is the real Dracula, thus explaining why he could play the part so well in his movies, and now he’s hiding out here in Maine because – well, who would think to look for long dead silent film actors who are really vampires pretending to be doctors in a tiny fishing village on the coast of Maine?

And so that’s how I came up with the idea for this year’s NaNovel. How did you come up with yours?

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

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Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

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