NaNoWriMo, or How The Sight Was Born

It's November, which means that it's NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month! For those of you who aren't familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is an annual event where people attempt to write an entire 50,000-word manuscript between November 1st and November 30th.

Now, for me, just the thought of writing 50,000 words in thirty days makes me want to tear what's left of my hair out and hide in my room until January, but every year, more and more hardy souls attempt to perform this incredible feat. Some well-known books have even emerged out of it, like Wool by Hugh Howey and Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.

I will admit that while I was still in the plotting stages for Volume One, I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to write it during the 2010 NaNoWriMo, so I picked up a book called Book in a Month: the Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Dr. Victoria Lynn Schmidt. It was packed full of good ideas and systems, but because of my personal idiosyncrasies, I wasn't quite able to apply it to my own project (I ended up writing the initial draft of Volume One in a little over four months, starting from Christmas Day 2010 and ending on April 30, 2011).

There was one great thing that resulted from my purchase of Dr. Schmidt's book, however. When my son first took a look at its cover, he immediately - like, within one second of glancing at the book - noticed an error that I (and the book's cover designer, apparently?) had completely glossed over. Even after he pointed it out to me, it took a few moments before it actually registered in my brain. That event was the inspiration for the Sight, which, as readers of the Joel Suzuki series know, is Joel's ability to recognize tiny details that most other people seem to miss. On Earth, it's good for things like video games, Easter egg hunts, and Where's Waldo books, but on Spectraland, it's one of the special powers that allows Joel to save the day.

Take a look at the picture above. Can you spot what I'm talking about?