So I’ve kept saying over and over again since last year (actually, since before last year) that I wasn’t going to try to do NaNoWriMo again since graduate school inevitably prevents me from actually getting it done. The ideas tend not to be my strongest or my best (When All’s Said and Done, my first NaNo, is a huge exception to that; I really need to go back and do a second draft on it to add in some more stuff regarding miss Allyson and suchnot) or my longest stewed over, which hurts whatever I write to begin with.
Of course, I keep saying that I’m not going to put myself through the stress of it again, especially with so many half-started (half-finished, mostly finished) writing projects already, plus my thesis, plus two classes, plus everything else. Shiawase, among others, talked me into doing it last year. I got about 26,000 words in and had to call it there. I’ve kept the project, still untitled, and poke it every so often (it’s a prequel to a post-apocalyptic Arthurian reimagining that I want to write someday–another one of those half-started projects–that’s based in part on a short story I wrote in college), though not often at all. Epsilon more often captures me (that’s trying to become three books from two, with one focusing on the resistance movement in the Borderworlds. We’ll see what happens). But I digress, as I often do.
An idea has been tugging in the back of my brain for the past several days, a confluence of some things that happened at work and some random musings. I work in retail clothing sales, so I meet all kinds of people and help people find clothes for all kinds of occassions. An incident this past weekend got me to thinking about one of the strangest customers I’ve had in the thirty-some odd months I’ve worked there, and that in part triggered the idea for what may or may not end up being my NaNoWriMo project for this year. The other part that’s inspired me was thinking philosophically about World of Warcraft, the internet, and how we meet and come to know people through cyberspace without actually knowing much about their “real lives,” their “real” circumstances. These things coming together have given me a starting point for a potential NaNoWriMo project for this year. I’ll probably do some scribblings about it today before work, maybe, while I’m grabbing my dinner (otherwise, I’ll be reading in the cafe at Macy’s like I usually end up doing–one or the other). I suppose in part the idea is also inspired by .hack//sign though only in a vague sense–some of the elements of my idea are similar, but only on the surface.
“Byron” is a very sick young man, probably in his early twenties or so, with little hope of survival. He retreats into “Universe,” a VR-equipped (though not required) MMORPG that’s become popular in the past several years. He’s played since launch and is somewhat popular and powerful as a result. “Iryn” or “Ryn” is a more recent comer to the game and isn’t a big fan of Byron’s at first, until she gets to know him thanks to a mutual friend (maybe the mutual friend gave her the account? I have to brainstorm more). Byron and Ryn form a tight bond and after a while, Byron opens up to Ryn, telling her about his out-of-game circumstances. Out of the blue, after this, she receives a VR rig for the game. Not too long after this, she realizes that he’s stopped logging out of the game and starts to worry. She ends up tracking him down thanks to some other friends and meets his terrified parents. Byron, having suffered some painful, difficult setbacks, has completely retreated into the game through virtual reality and cannot be pulled out–he has to make the choice to log out, which he will not do. Ryn convinces him to log out for the sake of his parents, at least for a little while. I don’t have much more than this figured out (it’s a very new idea, after all), but it’s a start, at least. Maybe I’ll be attempting NaNoWriMo this year after all.
