Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Lack of Apples, NaNoWriMo, and a Rename

Just when I was starting to think I was running out of things in my own life to tell you about, and was about to resort to mindless rantings, a whole bunch of interesting things happened.

Firstly, my plans to plant an apple tree have unfortunately been cancelled, on account of me accidentally killing the apple seeds that I was so excited to plant.
You see, the instructions I had found online (which I will not be linking you to) told me to germinate the seeds in my refrigerator for at least six weeks. Last week would have been five weeks, so I checked up on them only to find that not only had the seeds not sprouted at all, but there were spots of mold forming on the damp paper towel around the seeds. I promptly threw them out and consulted a real live person who told me that I should have put them somewhere warm and in the sun -- you know, the type of place that plants actually grow.

Secondly, I've officially decided to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org) for the first time. I've signed up on the site and have started tracking my word count. The unfortunate irony, of course, is that I cannot count the words written in my blog, making the time it takes to write this very post a bit wasteful when you consider the difficult goal of 50,000 words of a story in a month. I'd been aware of NaNoWriMo in the past, but this was the first year that I realized that it's an actual organized event and not just a title slapped onto a time of the year.

Lastly, and tied to NaNoWriMo, is news about the novel I'm writing. I've been writing the novel based on my short story titled "The Other Woman," and so I was tentatively using the same title as the short story for the title of the novel. I never wanted to use that title, as the novel is about much more than the main character being "the other woman" (dating a cuckold/married man). For the longest time I couldn't think of one, but didn't stress over it since I'd barely finished the first two chapters.

On the NaNoWriMo forums there is a place for people to get help with the titles of their works, and I was tempted to use this resource since part of NaNoWriMo is putting the title, description, and excerpt of the novel you're writing in your profile. It embarrassed me to have such a simple and inaccurate title.
Instead of using the resource, I started brainstorming while simultaneously using an online thesaurus. I wanted a title that couldn't be thought of in five seconds, and I'd always been fond of titles of classic literature (I had joked a few times of calling my novel "Having Once Been Normal" simply because it takes a simple phrase and makes it sound elegant).

Long story short (arguably), I've thought of a new title for my novel, which, henceforth, shall be called "An Offbeat Affair".

Wish me luck in reaching 50,000 words in a month!
-Ryan

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