NaNoWriMo and Other Projects

The wedding is over, thank goodness. I am infinitely relieved not to have to go through any more planning or buying things to please other people. No matter how much I complain about the DJ or certain other vendors that didn't live up to their promises, the only thing that absolutely had to happen on that day did--we got married. I'm still inclined to wish for a week I could do nothing but sleep, although I'm finding we're nearly as busy now in the weeks after the wedding as we were in the month leading up to it.

Also, I can't quite believe that I didn't post at all on this blog in the month of September. I believe that I intended to on various days, but there were other things that had to get accomplished, and so something had to give. On the one hand I'm exhausted from dealing with all of the deadlines, and on the other I would really like to do some creative things... even if now I'm prioritizing relaxing.

It's somehow surprising, but it is already October 26, just 6 days away from the start of National Novel Writing Month. I have that project pinned up as something I would like to get to, but as of now I have no idea about what sort of idea I would like to use. I also know that I need to do a certain amount of planning (chapter outline, main characters and conflicts, a list of names) or I won't get very far. I've read some enjoyable books lately, so perhaps I will start with what I liked about them and use that as a foundation.

One project I think would be interesting would be if several people put together an outline with a set of main characters and central conflict, then each person took off with their novel separately. Let's say we had a guy named Bob Stickney. One day his dog Bender gets run over by a car, his girlfriend Beth Ann leaves him, and he wins $100,000 in the lottery. It would be really interesting to see how the main characters changed, what plot twists developed, and what minor characters sprung up. Of course, I'd need at least one other person who would be willing to tackle this. What do you think? Anyone interested?