rocky laber

Last year I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and the unique experience of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This year I’m giving it a whirl, my story falls into the young adult category and is based loosely on an experience of my friend Darlene, who sings with the Bob Claire Orchestra.

I became fascinated with a story she related to me one night at rehearsal. Probably a year and a half ago I started scratching out an outline after talking through my idea with my daughter while we went on a neighborhood walk one evening.

I’d heard Ann Arbor, a DJ on KFJC, talk about NanoWriMo, she had some guests on her Wednesday morning show that recanted their experience. I briefly thought about my story, but never found myself with the time or inclination to commit to actually doing it.

Recently, I have done some work with a new company on a multimedia project. Our experience together was smooth and harmonious, and the client was thrilled with the work we produced. To celebrate the completion of the job, we all met for lunch, which was the first time I met face to face with these new partners. Yet through working so closely together, we’d developed a friendship and had a really nice time. It was over lunch that I realized that we all seemed to have a story we were harboring, a woman on the client’s side started talking up nanowrimo. That turned out to be the nudge I needed, and now here I am.

Here’s a look at my novel in progress, and here’s a look at NaNoWriMo.

I’m guilty of not having updated my site in a while, but it’s still current enough to give a flavor of what I’ve been up to:
rlaber.com