I had quite the revelation last night. For the last few weeks, ever since I had decided to write in the CampNaNoWriMo in April, I have been struggling with a huge problem. Which of my many story ideas to write on? I have a number of them, and although I will write each and every one of them, I could not decide which of them to roll with this April. Should it be the one in the bomb shelter? Should it be the one where the dude is abducted and tortured? Should it be the one where the boys go into space? Should it be the one where… You get the point. As I was whining to the wife last night about it being April 1st, and I could not decide, she asked a few questions about the stories. To my surprise, she actually remembered a number of my quick synopsis’ that I have told her over the years. And with each one she brought up, I told her why it wouldn’t be a candidate at this time. Hell, all of them are and all of them are not at the same time. I guess I just need “to feel it” when they cross my mind. Anyway, the first one that I dismissed came back to me after I quickly said no. As I sat there in silence for what must have been forever, I said “Yes! It’ll work!” I climbed out of bed and trotted down to my study to grab my journal. I had to record all the thoughts that were now streaming through my mind. In that single instant, my mind was quite clear on how I would structure the story so that I could write it in portions (serials) and still sound somewhat coherent in the end. I was blown away. I laid there in bed, jotting down notes and ideas for near an hour after the time we had decided to head to bed. Finally, after recording just about everything I could think of about how I wanted the story to go, I turned the light out and slid down to get some sleep. I then proceeded to lay there, thinking about the story. I had a number of other great ideas running around my head, and I almost got back up to write them down. “Nah” I told myself. I will remember them tomorrow and rolled over to get some sleep. Damn me for not writing them down. For the live of me, I cannot remember them this morning. I will work on that today and see if I can recapture the thoughts.
So, yeah, I have a story to work with this a.m. I am going to rock this story! From what I gathered last night, I am going to shoot for 4 or 5 parts, and around 140,000 words total. I will publish each part as I go along, and try and stagger them about every 45 days or so. My goal for April is to write the first 2 parts and publish part 1 by the middle of May. Part 2 will be written, but I will wait to drop that one until around July 1st. In May and June, I will work on parts 3 and 4. I think I will wait for part 5 until I get into the fall, to see if there is enough interest to wrap things up. As excited as I am about the story line, I am sure it will nearly write itself. I will start working on a coherent synopsis of the story line over the next few days and post it. I need to start working on a title as well, so any suggestions after I post the synopsis would be greatly appreciated.