NaNoWriMo RE: Is any one else being distracted because they would rather be writing in a different genre?

[quote=crazy_sane_person]This year I decided to try out a different genre than I normally do, but I have hit a bit of a slump because I am busy pining for Fantasy (my writing first love). My nano this year is just about normal people in a normal place, with lots of focus on the relationships between the characters, and there isn’t even so much as a shadow of anything vaugely magical, mythical, or supernatural. There hasn’t even been an opportunity to insert a good fight scene into the story yet. I would tweak the story a little bit to fit some fantasy elements in, but then I feel like I would be abandoning a perfectly good story line. I have already commited myself to writing something other than fantasy this November. I am trying to console myself that once nanowrimo ends I can write about talking beasts and magical beings all I want, but it is still feeling like it is going to be a looooong rest of the month. Is any one else being distracted because they would rather be writing in a different genre?
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I find that when I get stuck, the best thing to do is:

1) Drop a dead body some place where your MC will find it, it could be one of the characters you are already using or it could be just “Mr. Body” (from Clue the board game). OR 2) Have a vampire attack your MC or have you MC witness what they believe to be a vampire attack; this can happen in a non-fantasy world, if your MC is really superstitious and believes vampires COULD exists even though they don’t – they could have just witnessed a mugging, but because they are so superstitious they thought they saw a vampire attack some one.

In either case it gives you something “exciting” for your characters to do. A dead body always stops your MC in their tracks and makes them do something about it, and a vampire always causes some sort of new sub plot to happen. And this being NaNoWriMo, if it doesn’t match the rest of your plot, you can always take it out come December.

The reason for doing this would be to keep your story interesting or at least to keep you interested in writing it. By adding some thing not in your original plot, it makes you look at your plot in a new way and will help you to see ways to make it fun to keep on writing.

Of course, some times it’s just better to follow your gut too. And if your gut is telling, drop this and write something else, than, maybe that’s what you should do.

Of course than there is alway: WRITE EVERYTHING!

—write your normal characters AND write a fantasy at the same time – two books at once—

That’s what I’m doing. Well, to sort of explain what happened, it went like this: what started out as one big novel, added 2 smaller novellas, than a series of 4 children’s chapter books, and now I’ve got a series of short horror stories inspired by one sentence prompts, which will end up as a two volume set going as well!

For my short story book set, I’m attempting to make each (or at least as many of them as possible) of these prompts into stories (each 1k to 5K long) about Dracula. I’m also trying to find a way to include Rancid Yak Butter in each one. 100 short stories times 1k words = 100k words right? and 5k times 100 is 500k? So that means I’ll be writing up to 500k this year???????? YIKES! What did I get myself into? Wow, what a weird DARE I’ve made for myself! LOL!

In between all of that I started writing a writers “how to guide”. =P

Problem is, every time I write something I think – hey, that’d be good if I did this with it instead. Next thing I know, I’m starting a different book/plot. As soon as I get an idea I have to write it down so I don’t forget it, but than I start writing the whole thing, not just the idea. I can’t stop starting new writing projects!

Anyways, as it stands right now, I am writing one novel, 4 children’s chapter books, 100 short stories, and a non-fiction how to guide. I’m going back and forth between each of them, writing a few pages for each of them each day. So, I’m sort of not a rebel, yet at the same time I’m doing a *do what I want* rebellion. Who knows, which, if any, of my book projects is actually FINISHED by November 30th.

I can see this project going through December and into January, seeing how it looks like I’ll need 500k to finish all of them. Oh well, at least it’ll keep me busy once Maine’s blizzard season gets going and I’m stuck inside with nothing to do all day – I’ll have plenty to write! LOL!

[quote=The Unconqured Frontier]Now’s not the time for restrictions. [/quote]

I’ll second that! Don’t stick yourself in a hole and say you can not write anything other than the one plot you planned on writing.

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 of Oct 31/Nov 1st strikes and I start writing a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT plot all together!

On October 31st, 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 have 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!

Just go with the flow of NaNoWriMo. If you need to throw an army of battling orcs in the middle of your normal world – than do it. You can remove that scene come December, or you could have it be a scene from a book your MC is reading, or a nightmare they had one night, or a hallucination. There are lots of ways you could add fantasy action into your book without turning it into a magical world. You could have your MC go to the movies and than write the movie s/he is watching.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

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