Nano: Titles and choosing the killer

So, Nano kicks off in mere hours. I’ve got a plot, some of my characters (a couple more and the main players will be complete), I know where and when I’m setting it. Just two problems: I don’t know how to come up with a title for my novel, and I don’t know who my killer is (I’m writing crime fiction). Does anyone have any advice on either issue? And how is your Nano planning going?

Edited 18.49 on 31/10/2011: I’ve got a title! Still no killer though.

NaNo Story Construction

29th of October? Nano starting in mere days? Perfect time to figure out how I’m going to go about this thing then, isn’t it?

1. Pick 30 random prompts and write something for each over the month – ideally write for one prompt per day, with a minimum of 2,500 words per prompt.

2. 60 random prompts – 2 prompts per day, 1,250 words per prompt.

3. 15 random prompts – 1 prompt for every two days, 5,000 words per prompt.

4. 75 prompts – 1,000 words per prompt.

(All these prompts would be one or two words, short phrases or perhaps one or two lines of a song. And all those numbers are dependent on writing entirely original fiction – as I mentioned in my last post, I might do half original fiction and half fan-fiction if I am short on inspiration.)

5. Spend some time going through the Adoption Society forum over on the Nano site, picking up characters, names and maybe even a plot.

6. Attempt to come up with an amazing original idea by Tuesday (unlikely).

NaNoWriMo 2011

It’s that time of year again. One of my favourite times of year, in fact: not Christmas, or my birthday, but NaNoWriMo time! Looking at my Nano profile, I can see that I’ve participated and passed the 50k mark five years out of five since 2006, hitting my highest ever word count last year with 70,135 words written during a mere 30 days, up from 65,283 in 2009. This year, I think I’m going to try for 75,000 words in November. Two and a half thousand words of creative writing every single day for 30 days, at the same time as trying to find a job, preparing for a community theatre audition and preparing for a concert at the beginning of December. I like a challenge.

I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year. I like trying to write original fiction for Nano; on the other hand, I’ve been avoiding writing the beginning section of an ongoing fan-fiction project because it’s not as exciting as the rest of it. Maybe I’ll go for 37,500 words of each.

The fan-fiction part is easy; I already know that world and those characters. I’ve got nothing in my head for original fiction at the moment; a doubly blank page! I might take a risky approach and write my original fiction based on what I can find in the Adoption Society forums. There’s always some good characters lurking about in there. Or maybe I’ll look back at the list I wrote last year; six ideas of how to construct a Nano Novel.

I’m going to try to blog regularly throughout November; having some sort of accountability tends to curb the tendency to procrastinate (usually over a really boring scene). Who else is taking on the challenge this year? What is your personal word count goal? Anyone going for 100k or more?