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Because of NaNoEdMo -- and because I'm not happy unless I'm overbooked -- I've sorta returned to work on my NaNo novel. Dec. 1st found me with about 32,000 words, no plot, no coherency, no chronology, and a missing main character. Thanks to one of my former students who has been spending a great deal of time in my office this semester, I think I've found the missing character. It's amazing how having someone to bounce ideas around with makes such a difference. My fatal flaw as a writer (well, besides the procrastination and lack of discipline) is that I need an audience. A real life person or people who I can write for, talk to, and who will talk back in real time. I also need a Master of the Bloody Obvious--someone who can and will make me see what's sitting in front of my nose.

To my surprise, the various scenes I wrote four months ago actually did have some chronology. In no way were they written in order, but there seems to be only about three, maybe four, major gaps in the story. All of these dealt with the missing character. Of course, there are a lot of transition problems between and within scenes. Scenes started wherever and ended wherever, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence. And, NaNo being what it is, there's a lot more that got written than will ever be in the story. Whole pages were written with the strikethrough key on. Still, this novel might just be salvagable.

I'm also playing with a very vague fanfic idea. Because of Netflix I've discovered The Dead Zone--a show I've been ardently avoiding these past few years because the few ads I saw just didn't appeal to me. Possibly this avoidance was a good thing, as it seems the show's third season finale, a two parter, got preempted indefinitely last August. Yet, the show's been renewed for a full fourth season, set to premiere this June behind 4400. Over the next three months, I get to play catchup :)

One of the first season episodes deals with the main character sitting on a jury for a murder trial. The rest of the jury members seem to represent the best of the Canadian Actors' Union, including: Blu Mankuma (Forever Knight), Jim Byrnes (Highlander), and Kett Turton (Dead Last). If Callum Keith Rennie had been in that episode, then it would have been perfect. As it happens, Kett Turton was one of the stars of a short lived show called Dead Last. I'm probably one of the only people on the planet who actually liked it, and I've wanted to write fanfic for it since the beginning but never really had a good idea. In this particular episode of Dead Zone, Turton's character is unnamed. To me, this is a crossover waiting to happen. Though, now that I've mentioned it, it'll never happen.

I've also doomed my novel to extinction by mentioning it. Or maybe this is a curse that's only in my head.

ETA: Ah. They saved CKR for a later episode in the season.