Never one to shy away from literary trends, I took a break from fiction-writing this month and pounded out not one, but three self-help books about finding happiness, complete with cherry-donning cover art:

	In my first ever self-help book, I propose that you don’t really need to be happy to feel happy. The human body is full of all sorts of chemicals that, when mixed with other chemicals, can make you feel like totally all right, man. With chapters like, “Scoring a Bag of Happiness,” “Boredom Without Boredom,” and “Cereal is Awesome,” along with twenty blank pages in the back for “when you’re in a pinch,” this book will have you on the right path to literally forgetting your troubles in no time.
	In my controversial follow-up to High and Happy, I suggest you are just not made to be happy, and the sooner that you acknowledge your inescapable misery, the fewer remaining years of your pathetic life will you needlessly waste trying to be something you are incapable of being: happy. In Chapter 7, “You’re the Only One Who Wasn’t Invited to the Sex Orgy,” I list 3 new Nick’s Tips™ for taking your mind off of how much fun your friends, family and co-workers are having without you. Tip 1: “Look in the mirror and repeat the three P’s: Poor, Pathetic, and Pitiful. Then go rub one out.”
	The final installment of my Happiness Trilogy, also known as “The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need,” I teach you how to eliminate the cause of your misery: yourself.

From my mustache to yours:

Wood talked about the power of specifics in a first sentence. You know, the hook. He gave some example that he also references in his book about a marquis eating lunch, but I’ve already forgotten. And, oh yeah, I only ended up reading half of the book, so…

So the rule for Round 2 was that all stories should begin with the bland, generic sentence, “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” The trick would be to write a killer second line.

I wrote a little story in the next week or so and sent it off a day early. I’d been checking back at the site every few days to see if I was a contender or not, but alas, today I saw that a winner was chosen, and it was not I.

Here is my entry: “A Fern in the Rose Garden.” Please to enjoy.
A Fern in the Rose Garden by Nick Faber

My Tiny Family

We come across a miniature village, set up on the lot between the antiques store and the used bookstore. Tyler, running around the model village, looks so gigantic and surprised that I have to laugh. My wife touches my back and I tense up again. “I’m big!” Tyler says, bending over to peer into the miniature ice cream shop. He is big. I wonder if the tiny villagers ever feel so bored.

Well, to that question, I say “No!” Or “Yes!” Actually, the only thing I can say with certainty is “That depends!”

Here are a couple of planning pitfalls I’ve experienced in the two and a half years I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo.

Changing Your Mind
I started thinking about NaNoWriMo 2009 about a week ago. I was lying in bed, and as my mind started to wander, I started imagining a character and a scenario that were perfect for a novel, or so it seemed in my half-sleep state of mind. I sprung from my bed, fired up the Eee PC and wrote the following note to myself:

astronaut on very long journey loses lights and communication. astronaut goes nuts before they can send rescue vessel.

The next morning, I started to do a little brainstorming. OK, who is this guy? Why is he alone in space? What does his vessel look like? Who loves him? What are the stakes? Why do all of my novel ideas involve intergalactic travel??? By the end of the day, I was already tired of my story. It was already too much like A Space Odyssey, and I haven’t even read A Space Odyssey! So I scrapped it.

Later that evening, a title popped into my head: “There’s a Boy in Here.” Based on my recent experiences of writing stories based on titles, I was excited by the possibilities this context-less title held. I took notes for a couple days. I drew a couple pictures of scenes and settings. I thought of a new form that would blow people away. I searched for “There’s a Boy in Here” on Google just to make sure it was an original title. And it wasn’t. So I scrapped it all again.

Yesterday, I got my third NaNoWriMo idea in a week, and it’s only August. I like this one, so I’m trying not to think about it too much, but I don’t work that way. I’ve already got a Google Doc full of ideas.

I may learn another lesson about planning this year, but I won’t know until November 30. I’m hoping that, by then, I won’t be left to wonder if I ditched out on my earlier ideas too soon. If I were to have thought of a man in space by himself on October 31, 2009, maybe I would have written something I really liked, something that was nothing like A Space Odyssey. Who knows?

Setting Plot Expectations Too High
In No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty warns that overplanning may set yourself up for failure. I’m paraphrasing here, but if your novel is too planned out, the words you write may not match the ones in your head. Two years ago, that’s exactly what happened to me. Last year, I started with very little, and I somehow managed to pull an entire novel out of myself just by banging on the keyboard every night.

In 2007, before I read No Plot? No Problem!, I started with a fairly detailed outline, and dropped out after two frustrating weeks. At that point, according to my outline, my protagonist was already supposed to have met his long-lost twin. But in my actual novel, he still hadn’t left work for the day – and he still had to find the letter, travel to Virginia, and attend his mother’s funeral! Ah, screw it!

So, in the spirit of not wanting to over-plan, I approached last year’s NaNoWriMo with no plot at all. All I had was a character and a premise: a geriatric Senator and an interstellar flight gone wrong. And guess what. I “won.” It’s no Sirens of Titan, but it’s more than 50,000 words, and all of the elements of a novel are in there: themes, settings, characters. (Just remind me to finish editing it some time).

Hopefully, for NaNoWriMo 2009, I can brainstorm about themes, characters, and perspective without planning and eventually bailing out of a plot.

***

So, as for the question, “Is it too soon to be planning my NaNoWriMo novel?” Well, like I said at the top, I can only say “That depends.” Can you plan it without killing it?