NaNoWriMo’s Coming

Which means I’m starting to think about what I want to write about. National Novel Writing Month is about writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. I attempted it last year and nearly made it at around 40,000 words, but, unfortunately, I lost interest in the story. When it comes to long form stories, I confess I have commitment issues, which is why I love writing short stories. I have a 60,000 word manuscript tucked away in my Google Drive of the very first novel I ever tried to write, complete with scene-by-scene outline of the rest of the novel, but I just couldn’t get myself to finish it. Commitment issues.

But since NaNoWriMo is next month, I want to take another shot at writing a complete novel-length story. The question is, what kind of story should I write?

Last year, I tried my hand at a dystopian fantasy story about superheroes. People with powers called Alternates were responsible for destroying the world once before and their existence became forbidden as all of them were wiped out. A young woman discovers she is one of the first Alternates in three hundred years, which puts her life in danger. For me, it was a mashup of Final Fantasy and Star Wars. Unfortunately, the scope was too big for me to finish in thirty days, so I abandoned it to write short stories. To date, I’ve never went back.

At this point, I’m not exactly sure what I want to write. Fantasy requires a lot of world building, but I just finished a short story a couple months ago that is fantasy that already has great deal of the world building finished.

Thrillers are what I enjoy most, but urban fantasy seems appealing as well. Science fiction requires a lot of the same world building work that fantasy does, but, of course, Star Wars is my favorite story of all.

I teach high school students, and while there is a lot of young adult literature that isn’t very good, there are a few stories I enjoy that my students do as well.* Because of my students, I might consider writing a story with a young adult protagonist. But maybe not.

I’m undecided so far, but I need to commit to an idea soon. I don’t want to dive in November 1 without a clear idea of what kind of story I intend to tell.

I will inevitably put a lot of pressure on myself to write something excellent during NaNoWriMo, which makes deciding what to write even more difficult. I’ll figure it out sometime in the next three weeks.

Who else is planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this year? What are you doing to get prepared?