Ben's NaNoWriMo Log

Beginnings added Sep 23, 2005
I got it in my head to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't come up with a title yet, but I'm sure something will come to me as time goes on. It's a fantasy novel, and I'll come out and admit it right away: it's the backstory of a character from my D&D campaign. Yes, I know it's lame, but I've had more practice writing character stories than anything else. I've omitted anything obviously D&D-related from the story, and i's set in a homebrew world. Most of the things that are being left out (elves, dwarves, monsters, etc.) are only present in the game to keep it in line with the normal D&D experience; I run a pretty humanocentric campaign. This is not to say that there won't be any fantastical elements in the story, just that you won't necessarily find them in any rulebooks. As I was never really intending to use this world for anything other than gaming, there are a few fairly obvious lifts from other sources. As it is, I doubt this will ever get anywhere near being published anyway, so I just won't worry about it. If you're interested in getting some background information, you can check out the campaign pages. Ideally, I should be including anything important within the story itself, so if you don't want to wade through all that stuff you don't have to. One of the main reasons I'm actually trying this is because I've been writing up the story of the current game as it progresses. You can read it here. Obviously, it's got a lot more D&D content, but I've tried to keep terminology out of the story itself. The novel is the story of Sarah Caldwell, who is the mother of Rachel Caldwell, one of the characters in the game. Up to this point Sarah has been an enigmatic background personality, and I didn't give much thought to her motivations until I started planning this story. I was having to come up with a lot of names when I was designing characters, and Sarah is actually named for a girl I dated very briefly in college. The "chapters" link will show the chapters in order, without comments. I've never been good at finishing things I try to write, so this is going to be a good challenge for me. Part of me is apprehensive about letting others read the story, let alone as it's being written, but another part of me knows that this sort of diary is a very useful motivational tool. Whether anyone reads or not, there will be a theoretical They who will see if I slack.
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