You Say "Nano," I Say "WriMo!"

My Dear Reader,

I'm on to you.

I know what you've been thinking, as you refresh the main page of my blog over and over again, waiting for the next post to appear. This post. You've been up to it all day, haven't you? Yes, I know you have. Don't worry; I understand. I won't judge you.

But back to the thinking you've been doing, and how I know what it is. Yes. Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I mean, Halloween is over, and it's that time of the year again. I know it just as well as you do. And I know that you know that during this time of the year, something special happens. And you're waiting for it, aren't you? Wondering if it's going to happen, praying that it will, thinking to yourself, "When is Cecily going to start talking about NaNoWriMo? WHEN????"

I know you so well.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a bit overdramatic. Life is much more fun that way. But it's true, Gentle Reader: NaNoWriMo (or, National Novel Writing Month) has come upon us once again, Or at least, it's come upon me. I'd like for it to come upon you, but that's a personal choice.

As you may recall, this is the first year I've done it, tried to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. The first year, I nailed it. The second, I failed miserably. And then I tried a second time, and failed even more miserably. I think I got to 16,000 or something: pathetic. This year, however, I'm planning on making up for that. Serious. I even did pre-writing this time. That is historic.

So, what is my novel about, you ask? Okay, this is the part where I'm not so awesome. This part is the part where I turn into a total nerd: I'm writing a Star Trek fan fiction-thing.

"WHAT?" you say! "Didn't you have an entire rant against that, like, forever ago?" (Just try to pretend that you haven't read every single word I've written so many times that you've committed them all to memory. I know you have.)

Yes. YES. I'm so ashamed. Well, half of me is. The other half is like, "But the story is so dang awesome! I've been thinking it up for years. Years, I say!"

Okay, so here's the deal. I'll tell it to you straight: when I was a freshman in college, like three million years ago, I had the most ingenious idea for a Star Trek series EVER. I promise, this isn't just the Halloween candy talking. It's pretty cool. Remember, this was when Star Trek was still on the air, so it's not quite as pathetic and lame as you're thinking. I still know what you're thinking. Anyway, I went to two of my friends and together, we were going to write this thing. It was going to be a stand-alone series, set in the Star Trek universe, but with completely new characters and stuff. And we all took turns creating the characters and figuring out what the plot was going to be, but truth be told, it was my baby. I planned out a whole seven seasons. So when one of us got married (Not me; don't worry. I'm not hiding some secret husband somewhere.), and decided she couldn't do it anymore, the whole thing kind of fell apart. It happens. People move on. Well, except me. I'm not very good at that.

So since then, these characters have been floating around in my head, haunting me like ghosts who want vengeance, except instead they just want me to write their story. And I have been. Actually, a lot of the fiction I've posted here actually uses characters from my series that I've tweaked to make them work in another setting. Yup. I swear, they just won't leave me alone. So, I'm going to write their series, if only to satisfy them. You don't have to read it. I'll even put a synopsis here* so you don't have to read that.

So, that's my plan for NaNoWriMo. I'm actually 6,340 words in already. If all goes as planned, I'll surpass last year's word count by next week. So I'll keep you updated, as usual. And if you're doing it too, and you want to be my writing buddy on the official NaNoWriMo site, my name is theotherone. We'll keep tabs on each other, like people with substance abuse issues.

Here it goes!

Regards, best wishes, and I heard that,

-Cecily Jane

*Okay, so it's called Star Trek: Academy. It takes place right after Deep Space Nine, overlapping with Voyager. The idea is that after the Dominion War, the Federation has taken such a beating that they're in the process of rebuilding the fleet, starting with the new class of cadets. The series follows a special group of these cadets, from their first day through graduation and their first assignments. Yup, I'm a geek. And a nerd. And a dork. I'm a nerdgeekdork.