Even though it's August, the other Phoe has got me thinking about National Novel Writing Month in November already (which basically consists of writing an entire, if short, novel in a month or less). On one hand, I'll probably have a lot more time on my hands this fall. Only 6 hours of classes. Though: those are film classes, which tend to have extra time for viewing. And I'm also thinking of taking 3 hours of internship at TV-10 again (since I couldn't get the outside internship I wanted) which more translates to over 10 hours a week. And I'd like to get a job for cash (though who knows, I apparently suck at getting jobs even a trained monkey could do. I wanted one this summer, too).

But still, less homework/papers to write. And time wasn't really my problem in the first place, more motivation. I think I really could get it done if I ever thought I had a plot worth writing. My first try was just me basically knocking together a few of my old RP characters together. Which, I had them get in an arguement immediately and then it never ended, and there was never any plot, and I gave up because I could not think of any way of moving the stupid thing foreward.

That same year I tried switching to a plot provided to me by a friend (who writes quite a bit and had thought that one out but ended up not using it) and it was AWESOME. She pitched it to me as this girl falls into a coma, and she meets this ghost girl who lives in her house. The ghost chick is all about trying to convince the coma girl to die too, because if you die while you're in a coma you stay there, and then she would have a friend to hang out with. But after awhile, you find out some disturbing things about the ghost chick, like she has to relive her death all the time, which was her parents killing her because they couldn't afford to care for someone in a coma any longer.

I don't read horror, but I found it compelling. I tweaked it a little, making the story start out light (planning to make it darker and darker, as opposed to just starting out dark), and making the coma girl a guy, because I figured one way ghost chick could persuade the coma person to stay was seduction or something. But after awhile I realized I have no idea how seduction goes, or how to get into the head of a main character who I had foolishly made into a type of person I don't understand well enough to get inside the head of (a popular guy on the football team; he got in the coma because he or one of his football buddies got drunk and drove). Or how I would reconcile some of the details of the story, or even how I would resolve the main plot, or how to even keep things going steadily instead of just blurting out the whole surprise at once or making the conflict come to a climax halfway through the story and not having anything else to write. So I kind of copped out on that one too. I'm sort of mad I didn't save what I DID have to maybe look over now, I remember it being fairly good.

Last year, I was like, "I'm just going to do something plotless!" and I was going to hook up some of the funnier AIM conversations I've ever had, connecting them with fake ones I made up (hence the "fiction" aspect of this project) and sort of string it all together as being a loosely connected character study of the person having all of these conversations (me, sort of). I also thought it would be kind of cool to do it in "real time," i.e. making all of these conversations happen over the course of the month I was writing the novel. But then I decided it should have SOME plot, and I was going to work a bit in where the main character gets an internet stalker harassing her in some of these conversations, and maybe one of her other friends from the conversations saves her, but I realized if a stalker showed up at my house, it would be innefectual for someone miles away to somehow burst in and save me. And I wouldn't know how to write that bit even if it did happen, because all of a sudden I would have to depart from conversations, and write it in a different format, making it sort of confusing. So I pretty much scrapped it.

Anyway, I'm wondering (now, so that if I do decide to do something I can maybe work on plotting out an outline first or something, and really COMMIT instead of stopping during the first week) if I should retool either of these concepts (I really love the horror plot, and for the AIM bit, I am a lot better at character study than most other writing), go for something new, or just give up my literary geek pretentions already if I'm too lazy to back them up. Any input, people?

It's a dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand
His son is working for the Daily Mail
It's a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer

--"Paperback Writer," The Beatles