9/10/23
No Plot, No Problem
This is number twenty-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH (NaNoWriMo) is nearly upon us. This event started in 1999 when Chris Baty challenged twenty friends to create a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. Six of the twenty-one writers succeeded. Since that time, the event has grown to more than 400,000 participants worldwide each year.
It’s a simple challenge. Write at least 50,000 words of a new novel during the month of November. It was so successful that Baty wrote an “instruction book” in 2003 titled No Plot, No Problem. Baty offers the following advice for would-be novelists.
1. Just write. You can edit a bad book into a good book, but you can’t edit a blank page.
2. Tell people. It’s about accountability. It's hard to quit if your family, friends, and the local barista all know what you are doing.
3. Do 40-20s. Write for forty minutes and take a break to caffeinate for twenty minutes.
4. Work through the wall, like a marathon runner. It comes in week two or three, but if you push through, there is nothing like the exhilaration of week four.
5. Seek out other writers for camaraderie and support. Write where others are writing.
I found out about NaNoWriMo in 2004 and have ‘won’ every year since. This will be my twentieth year.
It took me a couple of years before I came up with a volume that I felt I could publish. I wrote the first draft of Nathan Everett’s For Blood or Money in November of 2006. It was published in paperback the fall of 2007. It’s now (finally) available on Bookapy.
But when November approaches each year, I’m once again faced with the dilemma of what to write this year. I’m a little beyond “No plot.” I keep seeing the big “Problem.”
The big problem I have this year is that I have no idea what I’m going to write. This could be as simple as my April 2017 project. I’d just finished the last volume of the Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventures and was feeling like I needed to get back to my roots, which included stories about artists. “I don’t know what I’ll write, but it will be art something.” That became the title.
The problem isn’t with not having an idea, it’s about having an idea that will spark the level of interest that some of my current works have. I even sent some ideas to my editors and they were somewhat cooly received. So, why not open it up to you, my readers?
Strongman: A weak and not particularly clever kid decides to build his body in an attempt to stop the bullying. As a result, he becomes a gymnast with a strong body that he finds intimidates girls as much as it attracts them.
Take My Wife, Please: A kind of do-over, but before he accepts the deal, our hero insists that his wife be brought along with him, only to discover that in their teens they don’t get along that well.
Time Traveler: Guy walks out of class on the last day of college, finally free and is sucked into a time vortex of some sort, plopped down in a different time near the same location. He survives and manages to progress in his new time—possibly even finding love—only to be sucked back into the vortex and plopped down in another era. Over the course of several such adventures, he starts seeing a pattern of where he’s been, what he’s accomplished, and who he has loved.
Switching Places: Girl in 1969 bemoans having been born fifty years too soon and not being one of The Jetsons. Girl in 2019 bemoans having been born fifty years too late to be part of the revolutionary generation of the hippies. Somehow, they switch places and discover the era they wanted to be part of isn’t as great as they thought it would be.
Means, Motive, and Opportunity: Not a mystery like it sounds, but a MILF story. Writer in his forties meets and falls in love with a woman in her sixties. It’s a slow-blossoming romance as both are cautious, having been burned before.
Immortal Eternal: People suddenly stop dying. They don't become miraculously young and healthy; they just don’t die. They try lots of ways to kill themselves, to no avail.
From Birth: Child grows up believing he is unloved and a bad child because no one will answer him when he speaks in their head, like he hears them. When he finally speaks out loud for the first time, his mother faints and cuts herself on a broken glass, dying. He vows never to speak aloud again.
And then there are stories that “I should write.” I’ve even started some of them. But I ran out of steam with most of them. These include the long-awaited sequel to A Place at the Table, the sequel to Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain, the fourth book in the Props Master series, Child of Earth, the original story I started writing when I was writing The Art and Science of Love, called Double Down, Pussy Pirates 2, continuing the SWARM Cycle saga of porn stars defending the earth. And one just suggested to me this week by a reader, a continuation of the “Model Student” series with the next level of Tony’s art and his family.
Have I run out of ideas yet?
Let’s not forget the number of requests I’ve had for a continuation of the “Team Manager” saga, for another sequel to City Limits and Wild Woods, another “Deb Riley Cyber Mystery,” the fourth volume of “The Hero Lincoln Trilogy,” the fourth volume of “Strange Art,” a continuation of “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins,” or a novel length continuation of “The Burgundy Chamber.”
Or, perhaps it is the second generation of “Living Next Door to Heaven,” narrated by Brian and Danielle’s empathic daughter Xan.
Or maybe you have the perfect idea that I simply have never thought about! What I know is that I’ll be spending a lot more time working on an idea for November’s NaNoWriMo than I will be drinking pumpkin spice anythings. (I just love the fact there a fruit with an entire season devoted to hating it.)
Let me know what you think of these ideas!
I’ll be returning to the idea of NaNoWriMo in the coming weeks as November approaches. Next week, I think we’ll discuss “Writer’s Block.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
