Ever the procrastinator

Here it is: 11:08 p.m. on May 31. Mere minutes until I bite the bullet and just do this thing. I'm going to follow Katie's lead and get down at least a few words before I go to bed tonight, just to kick start these next four weeks. I've been mentally preparing myself for this moment for months, ever since vowing to flex my creative muscles in the form of a really abysmal novel, but now that it's so imminent, I'm freaking out just a little at what seems like a gargantuan prospect. Katie would tell me not to worry so much about it, but I can't help it: I'm a worrier. That's why my friends call me Whiskers.

Anyways, I feel like I should give you all a little bit of information going into this. To encourage us NaNoWriMo-ers to write what we like and not what we don't (sounds simple in theory, evidently is trickier in practice), the creator of NaNoWriMo suggests we make two lists, or Magna Cartas--one that answers the question, "What, to you, makes a good novel?" and one that answers the converse, "What are the things that you don't like in novels?"

So, without further ado, my Magna Cartas I & II, which I very well may add to/change as time goes by (play it again, Sam):

Magna Carta I

• Relatable characters (a must)
  
• Natural dialogue
• Surprise reveals
• Sympathetic villains (Captain Hook!)
  
• Unrequited love
• Not judging books by their covers (need I mention "Beauty and the Beast" is my favorite fairy tale/movie?)
  
• Quirky people
• Scientific intrigue
• Magical realism
• Journal entries
• Nerds
• Well-written friendships
  
• Small-scale adventures
• People having weirdly specific fantasy lives
• Recurring jokes
  
• First person narration (maybe that's just because, as a journal-writer, it's the most comfortable medium for me)
  

Magna Carta II

• Dream sequences that bear little or no resemblance to actual dreams
• Villains without cause for villainy
• Love at first sight
• Dead parents
  
• Ugly guys who somehow end up with hot girls for no reason other than it's unexpected (or at least was, back before John Hughes ruined multiple generations with this trope)
  
• Unrealistic high school experiences (speaking of John Hughes)
  
• When the author reveals halfway through the novel that the main character has a mustache (or other such mental-picture-ruining physical feature)
  
• Happily ever afters (no really, maybe this sounds curmudgeonly, but I think it's a lot harder to end a novel, or any other vehicle for storytelling, on anything but a happy ending, but it's something I respond well to. For this, I always think of The Princess Bride--novel, not movie--which ends on a note of mixed relief at the characters' unlikely escape, and apprehension, as the hoofbeats of their pursuers' horses echo into the night. It allows for a kind of momentum that carries the novel past the last page, like leaving space in a frame for a photographed runner to run into)
  

I realize that to a certain extent, a lot of these things tend to fall more under the heading of things I do/don't like in movies/tv shows, but they obviously apply to novels as well.

So there you have them: my Magna Cartas. We'll see how well I stick to these guidelines in the next 30 days.

11:45 p.m. now
With 15 minutes to go until I whip out my giant scissors and cut the ribbon on this thing, maybe now is the time to tell you what my novel is going to be about. It has undergone a few iterations since I decided to commit to NaNoWriMo (or MantoWriMo, if you will)--and I had definitely for sure 100% decided to dedicate my 50,000 words to the novel version of my 3rd grade board game "Excavation!"--which would have been all about paleontologists doing it in the field (tee hee) but it soon became so bogged down by detailed character sketches, heavy backstory, and the daunting prospect of having to do all kinds of research that I decided to go with something of an entirely different nature.

So here goes. The one-liner for my novel, Landlocked, to be begun in 8 minutes, is as follows:

Aquaphobic marine biologist Olivia Locke serves as a scientific consultant to an inept group of newly-mutated wannabe aquatic superheroes.

Alrighty kids, follow me, Manta, as I take you on a not-quite-super adventure filled with average people, science, and more than a few sea creatures!