Alexander Patten

December 1, 2024

This past month I had the joy of participating in the month of November, or more specifically, National Novel Writing Month or “NaNoWriMo”

In other words, I wrote an entire novel–in my case a novella–from start to finish between November 1st to November 30th. I had no pre-conceived idea for a new book or anything else to guide me except for the writing skills I’ve so far acquired.

I actually forgot about NaNoWriMo until late in the evening of November second. the competition I simply asked my housemates for advice on a book concept. And we brainstormed for probably 20 minutes, with me taking notes and explaining why X Y and Z were off the table due to my writing principles.

The brainstorming session went great, starting with some kind of idea about two very opposite people getting slammed together by this or that circumstance. We toyed with the idea of a Jew and a Nazi being handcuffed together during WWII, but I feel everything to do with WWII is a horse that was already beaten to glue decades ago.

I decided that I definitely wanted to integrate a major romance element to the novel, because that’s a dynamic I’ve struggled to write thus far.

My room mate had the idea of some kind of cyber-gal who becomes really truly real for the male protagonist. I immediately saw this as a violate of my 5th Writing Principle, but my room mate sort of incisted.

In the end, we came to the idea of (mild third chapter spoilers ahead) a man and a woman who each come across a book which tells them about the other one. I didn’t do any research to see if this is a unique idea, but found it to be more than unique enough for a one month novel challenge.

The first problem I ran into from there was the possibility of time-travel and wonky free-will paradoxes, which would also violate my 5th principle. After all, if the man read about what the women would do the next day, he could tell her about it, and then, we would expect, she could do something different, etc.

In the end, I was satisfied to include the rule that the man and the woman could only read about what had already happened in the past. And from there, the obvious idea would be to have each chapter generated at midnight, describing all of yesterday’s events.

The man gets to read about everything the woman did and thought, and the girl gets to read about everything he did and thought. And then (really not spoilers) they get to fall in love through the power of a good enough book.

I also did something I never thought I could do, that being, setting it here and now. Literally in 2024 in my home town.

https://alexanderpatten.com/nn2024/

If you’re interested in reading any or all of this very novella, just over 16000 words (or 83 pages, the way I spaced them out), simply subscribe with the link below, and the page will be accessible to you.

Thank you all for reading and enjoying.

Peace!