Okay, now I know these Dares aren't for everyone (cough Nick M. cough cough), but I just wrote up an explanation of a Dare for someone, and I thought it'd be good to share it with folks, especially all the new kids dropping in from the last entry or 2. Thanks for coming by. Coffee's brewing and beer's in the fridge. Just don't pet the orange cat or you'll pull back a stump.

So, I'm planning another Novel Dare, in September.

Here's the deal -- since writing is such a solitary venture, it's fun to shake things up sometimes and share successes (and failures) with other writers. So I occasionally try to do what's called a Novel Dare.

Basically, the Dare is to write a novel in a month. Usually, if you're writing a full-length novel, you're looking at writing 90,000 words in 30 days -- 3,000 words a day. I've never done THAT much before, though I did write about 40,000 words in April, as part of a "Mini-Dare." I kept track of it in here, starting on April Fool's Day, of all days, and continuing, with the comments of other writers and THEIR writing progress, on my Discussion Board.

For me, this is a tremendous motivator, because I'm posting my progress (or lack thereof) online, for anyone to see. And in April I had about a dozen other folks participate from around the world, including a friend in London, and another writer I've never met from Australia. Everyone works on their own novel, and they post their daily word output online for all to see. It's a great way to feel less alone in the writing process, and it's a great goad to keep on writing. A lot of folks have said that they never would've written so much if it hadn't been for the Dare.

One note -- the novels written as part of the Dare are written by one person only. It's not a round-robin (though that WOULD be kinda fun!). People work on their own novels and share their experiences on a daily basis. It makes for fun reading.

I started recruiting folks a few weeks ago. Here's a link to the discussion about doing a novel in September. Sign up, why don'tcha?

Since my original post in there, I've decided to do the novel in a month, instead of September and October. Once I realized it was going to be a YA novel, I knew it didn't have to be so long. About 50-60,000 words, or about 2,000 words a day, tops. I can do that in a month. I hope... ;)

I'll be working on a mostly-brand-new science fiction novel in September. It's "mostly" new because the novel is set in the same future world as one of my stories, "Working the Game." The story takes place in Raleigh, in about 100 years or so, in a dystopic society where humans are either haves or have-nots, and the have-nots are stuck outside a man-made wall (for those of you familiar with Raleigh, think of the big brick walls surrounding the Beltline -- those were my inspiration), working as laborers with the hope of one day going over the wall, to the "cocoons."

Of course, I've got another novel -- well, actually TWO -- to revise before September. I finished up another SF novel, for adults, earlier this year, and after talking to some agents, I learned that I need to redo the ending. This novel, called The Wannoshay Cycle, takes place in the near future, about 10-15 years from now, and it deals with a world in which aliens have crash-landed in the Midwest of America and Canada. The aliens try to integrate with humans, then a pair of accidents occur that lead humans to round up the aliens and place them in detainment camps, much like those that held Japanese-Americans in World War II. The novel deals with a handful of humans who believe the aliens are not guilty of any wrongdoing, but in this future world (not much different from the present world, unfortunately), when it comes to potential terrorism, humans are incapable of thinking clearly.

The other novel I wrote in the April Dare was a gift to and a challenge from my wife -- a haunted romance set in Ocracoke, featuring sunken pirate ships and the headless ghost of Blackbeard! That was a lot of fun to write, and it needs one more coat of polish before it's ready for publishers. I may not get to this one -- Heart's Revenge -- until October or November. :)

So that's the upcoming Dare -- hope you can join us! Later.