National Novel Writing Month!

November should be called "Blog Death Month" for me. I mean, in 2009 my first blog had already died for other reasons, so I suppose that shouldn't count. But last year, when I was yapping about studying abroad, November was the death knell to that blog for the entire rest of the year.

The reason is simple: National Novel Writing Month. I've participated twice before, in 2009 and 2010, and plan to do so again this year. Not particularly because I want to be a professional author (as it stands now, I'm certainly not putting in the amount of work that'd require!), just because I like an excuse to be randomly creative. That's probably also why I like roleplaying and the like...

Anyway, among other things, this is your official notification that posts might very well be light starting from Tuesday, November 1st. I want to try and avoid seeing my blog come to a grinding halt this time around, but I know better than to promise that I'll actually be able to do that. If nothing else, I think I'd like to post excerpts from the stuff that I'm writing, pretty much for my own personal amusement.

What do I plan to write about, you ask? Well, inspired in part by what little I've seen of Madoka Magica, in part by my general enjoyment of magical girl anime, and in part by what I understand of the military, I'm going to be trying to create a (reasonably) serious deconstruction of what it would actually mean in our world for magic to exist. Focusing primarily on the Japanese "magical girl" military force in particular, which I'm calling the Magical Self Defense Force. That will also be the title. The idea practically titled itself, to be honest.

Among other things, this means that I'll be trying to depict the military accurately (although as I am an American, it will probably be more based off of the U.S. armed forces than the Japanese SDF, despite the title), hopefully while adding in the "magic" element in a way that makes it legitimately a "magical girl" style story. I've thought several times in preparing for this that I'm trying to write an anime rather than a book, yes.

The other major part of this, and the other challenge I'm hoping to prove myself equal to, is to manage to write a story that doesn't betray the feminist ideals I've been learning about lately. Writing about magical girls and the way they're portrayed would be a whole other post (probably even a whole other series of posts), so for now I'll just say this: I want to be able to write a story that relies on strength of character and plot to appeal to readers, rather than objectification; I want to be able to write a story that can deconstruct and analyze the problems with society, rather than affirm them.

At any rate! That's what I'm thinking about going into this. November's going to be one hell of an interesting month. These days (ever since I started NaNoWriMo), it always is.