I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
– Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Welcome Dear Readers,
As promised, I will outline my creative chaos into a well-ordered system of nonsense in hopes that you might find a long list of things you should never do in your creative process.
Previously, I announced my effort to participate in NaNoWriMo 2024 and write a 50,000-word novel, Whispers of the Desert, in just 30 days. NaNoWriMo doesn’t count prep time against the writing schedule. If I follow the to-do list from the website, I might get a path to success – or not.
- Develop story idea
- Create unique characters
- Construct a detailed plot or outline
- Build a strong world
- Grow your writing community
- Manage your time
Below is how I tackled this demanding list of tasks.
Develop story idea: This was my first shock at how hard the competition would be. I needed a story to write. As a lifelong pantser, I daydreamed and night-dreamed about what I would like to write about, and it didn’t take long. My head elves presented me with an infinitely detailed documentary on the subject of my desire.
The story’s subject was to weave in the current global collapse of society and civility along geopolitical lines. I would show opposing ideologies in a story about an insular society in the death throws of corruption in government and two violently opposed ideologies. Those ideologies are ancient religious precepts opposed to the desire to seek self-serving lifestyles through wealth accumulation (unethically, of course).
Create unique characters: This looked like a bridge too far until I remembered my imagination was boundless and ever-present. I created the protagonist, Amir, a baker’s son; the antagonist, the son of a corrupt judge; and supporting characters that help Amir rise to lead the people against the corrupt government and their minions of doom.
Create a detailed plot or outline: Me? A detailed plot? Pantsers don’t do that. I was lucky because I used Scrivener. The program automatically creates a detailed outline with many writing tools available as you set up your chapters and scenes. I created placeholder chapters to indicate what happens in the story.
Here, you can see a part of the chapter outline. The blue folders act as containers for the white square scenes in the chapter. These will change as the writing begins and the story evolves.
The image above shows the chapter outline on the left, the detailed outline in the center, and a synopsis and notes on the right. The center outline tells me the status, section type, word target, and actual words written as a color-coded graph. The synopsis reminds me of what the selected document is about, and the notes guide me through what should happen in the selected chapter, The Stoning.
Build a strong world: I don’t plan to construct a detailed and descriptive environment as a guide. I’ll let the story describe the environment through dialog, with more revealed as time goes by in the story.
Grow your writing community: This is the community you, dear readers and storytellers, connect with through the NaNoWriMo process and blogging. I firmly believe in a community that, through its interaction, helps everyone avoid trying to go it alone and allows for informal growth and entertainment.
Manage your time: All right, total fail here. I retired from the career world to focus on assisting Grandma Hyperion as she retreated into her internal universe and occasionally experienced a supernova that scorched my behind and others in the blast zone. Managing one’s time when the undies are aflame and the ears battered by what sounds like angry ducks is not important. However, I found that I do have more time than I imagined to come here and let my head elves unload.
This story is an experiment that may or may not work. I plan to change my data-dumping passive purple prose filled with adverb strings and endless exposition to a concise style that moves the story along without delay. I plan to use a minimum number of dialog tags and work fervently to show, not tell. You will get a blow-by-blow ringside seat as I post my progress here on Hyperion Sky.
Thank you for riding along.
Hyperion Sky 
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