author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So I've been doing that NaNoWriMo thing this year. I haven't been blogging about it mainly because I haven't really had a lot to say. I mean, beyond what I've been saying on the Colorado::Boulder regional forums. Most of my non-novel-writing energy has gone toward being active there, 'cause I gotta, what with the whole Municipal Liaison thing.

It's a weird and happy thing. Every year I get scared of the responsibility involved in this volunteer "fearless leader" position. I think, I must be crazy, thinking I can write a 50K-word novel and be a cheerleader and go-to resource person for everyone else in the Boulder area doing the same thing. I think, I'm going to let everyone down, I just know it. And then November 1 comes around, and suddenly everyone else is being such a boundless font of energy and excitedness that I find my job consists mainly of keeping up with them. The forum erupts in write-in suggestions and discussion topics, and my role is pretty much to participate, keep an eye out for questions that need answers, and officialize the events everyone else is setting up by pasting them into the calendar. And to send out the odd infrequent regional email.

Which is to say: Boulder NaNoWriMo participants rock.

Which is a good thing, because this year has been challenging on the novel front. Like I mentioned before, my stock of novel ideas mysteriously ran out. I went to the pantry, so to speak, and it was bare. So for the first time I have been writing my way through November by the seat of my pants. Driving by my headlights on an unlit highway, able to see only the next few feet at any one time.

My starting point was, as I said, the character sketch involving two guys leaving a bagel shop. I have come a long way since then. (Hell, I've come a long way since last night, when at 9:00 PM I had only 16,666 words. This weekend I am totally living inside my novel.) When I try to remember how little I knew on November 1st about these two men, I get a little flustered trying to reconstruct how I got from there to here. I mean, consider where I started:

"They're running away from some supernaturally scary pursuer or predator. The main character found this talisman thing. It does something. They have to do something with it before the pursuit catches up."

Fifteen days later, my understanding is somewhat more fleshed out:

"When Timothy finds an old silver penny in the desert, his life turns on a dime. Suddenly he has a deadly enemy, an inscrutable ally, and a strange newfound ability to leap from place to place with the flip of a coin. As he learns more about what he's running from and where he's headed, he makes a decision that may cost him his life, or may free others like himself from a two-hundred-year scourge. Or both; this coin needn't land on just one side at a time."

That's the synopsis I wrote today and pasted up on my NaNoWriMo.org profile when I also pasted in the new and improved title, Like A Bad Penny. (On The Run With Rocket was just a working title, which you can tell by how dumb it sounds. It wasn't much more than a single-clause summary of what I knew was going on: the main character was fleeing for his life in the company of a mysterious, scary guy called Rocket.)

And the thing is, that's not a synopsis--that's a back-cover blurb. The "inscrutable ally" is Rocket, a mentor figure who has the ability to say things (like, "The moon is made of green cheese," or "that space shuttle is totally going to explode") and make them true. The "deadly enemy" is another person-with-superpowers gone horribly wrong, who preys on newly awakened powers. Rocket thinks the quest is just to keep the main character, Timothy, safe, until he's totally assimilated his abilities and matured out of the reach of the predator. Timothy, once he knows what's going on, decides his quest is actually to defeat the predator once and for all. Meanwhile there's a damsel in distress, there's shameful secrets, there's possibly a troubled childhood, and enough tension between the main characters that the slash-fic damn near writes itself. In fact, I may up writing it myself, which either nips the slash-fic potential right at the source or else invites the writing of slash-fic that's more explicit than what I intend to include in the book (but not likely more explicit than what is in my head and will stay there, never to see the light of day, thank you very much). Which is not anyone's concern until such time as this thing becomes published and widely read. Which, of course, is the Big If which we are not concerning ourselves with now.

It's been an enjoyable ride. I'm almost sorry that I know where the second half of this book is going, because the process of discovery has been fun. Madcap, panic-making, tightrope-like, but fun. I suspect I shouldn't mourn the discovery phase just yet; I don't think the remaining action will fill 24K words. So there's probably a sub-plot I haven't discovered just yet.

I hope those of y'all reading this who are also participating in NaNoWriMo are having as much fun as I am!