The New Novel and the usage of Nano

Writing a novel in 30 days is an interesting experience, and I'm only on the third day (only having written for two days now), and I'm at 5900 words of my 50,000 word goal (over ten percent). My new novel is something completely different for me, as I'm writing a novel that involves Plato's Republic, and I'm doing a 21st century interpretation of the novel in an almost 1984-ish style of writing. The book is about a man who lives in a futuristic society (not that far from where we are today) where Plato was right, and everyone is placed in society by what metal is constituted in their blood (bronze, silver or gold). As the novel continues to be written, it starts to add little bits and pieces of its own that seem to want to be included, even though I've been free writing it for the most part. It's now starting to take serious form, and even as I was walking to work today, it was generating in my mind as new ideas kept coming to me, each one of them demanding to be part of the new novel.

Only once have I ever attempted to write a novel fast. It was back when I was a counterintelligence agent in the Army, and I had two weeks off of work, so I wrote "Deadly Deceptions", which was titled "Whose Side Are You On?" when I first wrote it. I was very happy with the novel, and it took very little time to write (even fast than the NaNo contest of 30 days); I think it took me a week and a half, if I remember correctly. Most of the time, it takes me six months or so to write a novel ("The Ameriad" took nearly five years, but that was because it was written in spurts rather than all five years in a row).

So, I have to say that this is turning out to be quite the experience for me, although I do find myself resisting the need to write each night, and I have to keep fighting myself from doing something else. I guess that's part of the problem whenever anyone tackles a project like this.

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