I can relate to the "This is my big novel, I don't want to mess it up by sticking to the NaNo rules" (paraphrasing what I'm reading between the lines here). It's the reason I've been letting what is probably my best idea languish as I've messed about with other things.

That 'big novel' stalled out after 14 chapters (= about 2/3s of the story) about eight years ago. Since then, I've recognized that the reason I was stalled was that I hated how I had started it. I but loved what I had beginning at about 4 chapters in, and wanted to go forward with a story that was contradictory to the beginning I had written. And I couldn't figure out the right way to extricate myself from the mess.

Well, I've since worked the mechanics and began preparing the rewrite, but it's not a NaNo friendly project. And I felt like the beginning, which already had too much telling rather than showing, was going to end up even more expository. The story is a modern fantasy with a very complicated world structure, and there is too damn much to explain.

Then it hit me just a couple days ago. What I needed was a prequel story starring the love interest from the original work. In the original work, that story's main character gets dumped into the situation in a clueless state and has a huge learning curve to deal with. But at that time, his love interest is already deeply involved in the scenario.

If I write a prior story involving her, I design that story from the outset to show rather than tell. Why is that better? Because even though the milieu is rich and well designed and I already know the character (and several supporting characters), the story itself is a total unknown, a blank slate. Helloooo, NaNoWriMo!

Since I've got a concept already for a sequel to the original story, I'm hoping I can get the guts of the prequel down in November, finish it in the editing months, then tackle the original story and have it finished before next year's NaNo, where I may just tackle the sequel.

How's that for hyperactive aspirations ? But who knows? Maybe I can pull it off!

...
Regards,
Eric Fretheim

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage-- as long as you edit brilliantly." ~C.J. Cherryh

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~Winston Churchill

"I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." ~Ernest Hemingway