Week 1 NaNoWriMo

Shh! Don't tell anybody what I'm writing about for NaNoWriMo because I haven't told anybody yet, afraid that I'll unpop the cork too soon releasing all the fizz. But I feel the need to vent about my noveling experience--and why not vent in the blog I devised for just this purpose?

I'm not sure if I picked the best plot--and I'm not even sure I have a plot! OK, Chris Baty, I know you said no plot no problem--I just hope you're right!

I've always wanted to write about the dynamics of a writing group--the kind of characters it attracts (aren't all writers a tad bit eccentric?), the relationships that form, the secrets that get revealed. In what other kind of class do you discover who is gay and who is straight, who survived an abusive childhood, who still mourns a baby who didn't survive the maternity ward, who was betrayed by a spouse, who survived domestic violence...The list goes on. Sounds more like a group therapy session than a writing class, but there you have it--that's what makes writing groups so volatile. Once I was in a class with two people who had what might euphemistically be called a personality conflict--the guy actually wrote a story where the woman went bananas and commited suicide in an exceedingly gory fashion. OK, that's a little extreme, too strange for fiction, but you get the idea.

I also recall the nurturing environment of a class I took at a library years ago that ended when the grant ran out.

So, this is my fuel. What do I have? A cast of characters, each with his or her own stories bursting to get out, each wanting to be the next Shakespeare. I'm getting to know these people and their stories, stealing shamelessly from myself and (shh!) the people I know. But I have no idea where this NaNoWriMo novel is going!