New Science Fiction Con and NaNoWriMo Alternative

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I’ve been getting ready to attend a new science fiction convention that debuts here in Sacramento Sunday 9 November, as well as looking to some alternatives to National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo. The new con is Quantum Con and will specialise in Doctor Who but will feature other science fiction too. It’s headed by a CSU Sacramento student who is putting it on as part of her project for her Recreation degree. This just shows you how much more sci fi and pop culture in general are becoming subjects of academia!

I meant to print up some more book marks for Fool’s Illusion to take to Quantum Con but the last couple of days have been very busy with writing projects including one for a client that was kind of last minute. I was also busy with my recent Examiner.com article on hard science fiction movies in light of Interstellar which just released Friday. Plus the Office Depot store where I normally get them printed is in the process of changing locations so I’m not sure what services are available there at the time. However, I’m going to be concentrating more on new fiction projects which brings me the topic of NaNoWriMo.

I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo. I’m not the kind of person who likes to speed write a novel under an event as big as NaNoWriMo since it gives me the feeling of doing it for experimentation more than for writing a work that I would intend to publish. But for novice writers, especially of the fiction genre, or even just fiction writers who feel they need to improve their speed and/or motivation for writing longer works, I recommend it. That’s not to say I don’t need to improve my writing speed. Because of this I’m doing an alternative in light of the event. I got the idea from Writers’ Digest associate editor TiffanyLuckey’s article. It’s a great article so I suggest you take a look at it.

My alternative to NaNoWriMo is to write a novella during the month of November since I have never written a full length novel not even at rough draft level. I had always said that I would at least write a novella someday and so when I read the above mentioned article yesterday I thought, what better time to start than during NaNoWriMo? Since compared to a novel a novella is pretty small, I’m also going to both revise a short story in full and plan my next fiction collection during this month.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? If so why and what do you do to keep yourself motivated while writing? If you’re not participating, do you have an alternative for yourself? If so, what? Please feel free to leave your comments in the box below.

Until next time . . .