NaNoWriMo: More things to fill the BPP void

[David Wiley]

It's not too early to start thinking about National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) coming up in November. This is where people nationwide leave their ego behind, lock their inner editor in a closet (nothing personal, Tricia), and bang out 50,000 words of the novel they have always promised themselves they'd write. NaNoWriMo provides structure, support, and commiseration from a surprising number of people doing the same thing at the same time. If you win you can even buy yourself a tshirt.


Maybe you're hankering to try your hand at fan fiction:

Matt: (gesticulating wildly behind Rachel). "Woot, woot! I love Washington! Go, Nationals! Go, Wizards!"

Rachel: (over her shoulder) "Matt this is my job. I could get fired."

Matt: "I told you. Sharon and I are putting the show back together."

Rachel: (to the camera)"Let's try this again. Three, two, one... The long simmering lobster controversy came to boil today on Capitol Hill..."

Matt: (bouncing) "ABC is number one! Woot, woot!"

Rachel: "Cmon, Matt. I have a family now. I'm too old for this new media bullshit."

Matt: "We're putting the show back together. Laura's got the website up. Dan and Tricia are already working on copy."

Rachel: "Sorry, guys. He's just leaving. Let's try another take..."

Matt: "Hey, you! Yeah, you. How much to rent the camera crew. Just for a couple of hours, heh, heh, heh."

Rachel: "Matt I just can't."

Matt: "I'll be behind you every story, every shot, for the rest of your career"

Rachel: "This is a steady paying gig.'

Matt: "Hey, you?! How much for just sound? I got ten bucks!"

Rachel: "You got Alison?"

Matt: "Not yet, but she's working at Fox. How happy can she be?"

[Greg]

Funny, I'm not one for fan fiction at all, but this little sketch had me really laughing at the thought of it. Great one David.

(I'm not touching on the National Novel Month thing, which I don't have much to say about because I don't really have interest in writing a novel.)

[Trey]

I think Rob needs to set a ground rule now as a codicil to the "be nice" rule: no slash fiction.

[David Wiley]

Trey said:

I think Rob needs to set a ground rule now as a codicil to the "be nice" rule: no slash fiction.

I'm not sure what "slash fiction" is. Did I cross some line? Apologies if I did. I intended only to amuse. I even flipped a coin over which of the ace producers to mention.

[Greg]

Eh, well, I didn't think it was an issue, but maybe I'm wrong. Although I had to look it up to really clarify "slash fiction" a bit, my first though on Trey's post was that he was making a joke. Such a rule, I hope, is unnecessary! Just the thought kinda creeps me out. (For fictional characters, one thing. Not my taste, but whatever. For real people? No. Just don't go there.)

Slash fiction, despite some ambiguity in the definition at least according to this, is decidedly more...odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction

So, I don't think Trey's post was a reference to yours David.

[Natasha]

2007 winner here! It was quite the experience and I bought myself the complete series of Buffy as a reward! ;-)

So.. you think you can write 50,000 words about the BPP?

[Ken Yee]

I'm trying to remember if the BPP piece on fan fiction talked about "slash." I'm not sure that it did, which was, I thought, unexpected, but maybe I'm a poor listener, too.

But yeah, for the love of god if there is slash to be written, please warn me because I'd rather not read it without mental preparation.

[Marc Naimark]

No excerpt for you on nanowrimo!

Natasha said:

2007 winner here! It was quite the experience and I bought myself the complete series of Buffy as a reward! ;-)

So.. you think you can write 50,000 words about the BPP?

[Natasha]

Haha! Too busy writing! I finished the book a week later and am still editing it. I plan on doing it this year as well! Are you signed up as well? We will have to do our own group when November rolls around!

Marc Naimark said:

No excerpt for you on nanowrimo!

Natasha said:

2007 winner here! It was quite the experience and I bought myself the complete series of Buffy as a reward! ;-)

So.. you think you can write 50,000 words about the BPP?

[David Wiley]

Natasha said:

2007 winner here! It was quite the experience and I bought myself the complete series of Buffy as a reward! ;-)

2003 Winner (I never did go back for a rewrite, but here's a piece of it: http://www.electricrider.net/dave/novel/cats.htm). I didn't know about Buffy at the time so I bought the tshirt.

So.. you think you can write 50,000 words about the BPP?

I think I could, but I don't think I will. Fan fiction usually takes fictitious characters and extends them beyond the bounds of wherever they originally occurred. The lovely folks at the BPP are not fictional, however. They are real people, and the artistic licenses that one would have to take to make an interesting story stand a good risk of offending someone. If someone at the BPP wanted to take a swing at it that would be one thing, but for an outsider to do it is more than a little creepy and intrusive in my opinion.

I've decided to try something a little crazier this time: 20 short stories in 30 days. I know short fiction is more demanding in many ways than long fiction, but it does not require as long an attention span. When I got stuck on my novel it was hard to get going again. If figure if I get stuck on one short story I can drop it and pick up another one for a while. Plus in all the writing I have ever done the closest I have come to entertaining was in the shorter forms.

[David Wiley]

Natasha said:

We will have to do our own group when November rolls around!

I like this idea. I'd bet my wife would be into it as well. She's currently got her 2004 entry spread in outline form across a 4x8 sheet of plywood in our dining room trying to figure out the most interesting way to tell the story. Time travel stories are interesting, but make for the most migraine-inducing plot problems I have ever heard of.

[Trey]

Greg said:

...Although I had to look it up to really clarify "slash fiction" a bit, my first though on Trey's post was that he was making a joke. Such a rule, I hope, is unnecessary! Just the thought kinda creeps me out. (For fictional characters, one thing. Not my taste, but whatever. For real people? No. Just don't go there.)
Slash fiction, despite some ambiguity in the definition at least according to this, is decidedly more...odd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction
So, I don't think Trey's post was a reference to yours David.

No, no, it was totally a joke! The BPP did a piece on fan fiction, and I thought slash was mentioned, but on re-listening, it wasn't. Sorry for the obscure reference. But yes, in fact, there's a subgenre of slash involving real celebrities hooking up. I think everyone here would be tasteful enough to not go there... hence the joke. Sorry it was taken wrong.

Now you might be wondering where I knew about this. I was first exposed to the idea when I came out as a teenager in small-town North Carolina; my only lesbian or gay contacts were some children's librarians at the public library, whom I'd known since I was like a tiny kid; when one of them discovered me furtively checking out the books in the "gender studies" section of the library, they took me under their wings and showed me some decent books on coming out, coming of age as gay, etc. But I had known them before as big science fiction fans, and especially Star Trek fans, and after I came out to them they told me about Kirk/Spock slash, which one of them had been writing since the late 70's. They didn't share any of it with me, probably thinking a) it would be inappropriate for a teenager and b) could get them fired, but I knew about it way before the Internet made it a wider phenomenon.

As for the celebrity subgenre—I swear I heard about it on some podcast or radio show, but Googling isn't turning up anything, though I see from that Wikipedia article that "real person slash" (RPS) has been around for awhile. I dunno, Internet memes come and go and it's easy to lose their provenance....

[Natasha]

I was kinda teasing about the fan fiction. It would be an interesting set of characters, though! Haha!

We will totally have to put the group together in October for Nanowrimo. We can then discuss how we are preparing for it and what we expect, etc! I am super excited to have maybe another group of supporters during the crazy time. This year will be very different for me since I won't have time to work on most of my writing at my new job.

Good luck to your wife on the time travel story! It sounds interesting just by her process.

David Wiley said:

Natasha said:

We will have to do our own group when November rolls around!

I like this idea. I'd bet my wife would be into it as well. She's currently got her 2004 entry spread in outline form across a 4x8 sheet of plywood in our dining room trying to figure out the most interesting way to tell the story. Time travel stories are interesting, but make for the most migraine-inducing plot problems I have ever heard of.