Progress on my novel: October 31

First, Happy Halloween! See my immediately prior post to hear what I really think about this holiday. Anyway...

...I mentioned back in my first post made after restarting this blog that I was doing so because I am trying to write a novel. I thought I'd end each month by giving an update.

I'm not ready yet to reveal what the novel is about, but I will tell you--so that this post makes sense--that it's a science fiction novel that takes place about sixty years from now, and that the main technology that makes the story possible includes both neurology and computers.

After spending the last 13 years as an IT Director for a school district, I felt like I had a pretty good idea about computers, but I didn't know much about neurology, so I spent most of August and September reading books on neurology. I read two introductory neurology textbooks (one cover to cover, and I literally mean I read everything from cover to cover, including the appendices and the index at the end, and the introduction at the beginning), and I read three additional books that were not textbooks but rather popular science books meant for a general audience. I took notes and feel like I have a pretty good, BASIC understanding of the concepts of neurology. I think, if I took an introductory neurology final exam today I could score a "C"  (I'd stumble really badly on neurotransmitters and the technical way in which they work, which is a little more information than I need for my novel, and on how the peripheral nervous system works, which doesn't apply so I didn't take many notes). My goal was finish the reading of those books by the end of September, and then spend the month of October, this past month

1. consolidating my notes
2. creating a "cheat sheet" of neurology terms that I could use as a reference as I wrote
3. creating my list of major and sort-of major characters for my novel
4. developing a fictional historical timeline of the neurology/computer science events from 2017 to the start of the novel (which I think is going to be 2073 unless I change my mind) so that I can be consistent in details as I write. 
5. developing a list of non-neurology/computer science advances that have taken place between now and 2073 (I can't create a world where NOTHING except what I'm writing about has changed). 
6. developing an outline of the events of the novel. 

If I could finish all of those items by today, I could begin actually writing page one of the novel tomorrow. 

I didn't quite get there. I wasn't helped by the fact that I hadn't finished reading the five neurology books on September 30, either. I finished them on October 10, so I've had three weeks to tackle the list above. I have completed #1, #2, and #5. I'm basically finished with #3, the only remaining item being that I haven't yet given my main character a name (I hate naming characters. Heck, I hated naming my own children. Whatever name you give them--characters or children--how do you know that's what they want to be called?). 

I'm currently working on #4, and it's taking A LOT LONGER than I thought it would. When I decided to do this, I imagined that the timeline document would be a timeline that listed--I don't know--the twelve to fifteen major events that occurred in the worlds of neurology and computer science between 2017 and 2073. I've been working on this thing since last Friday, though, and currently I have 43 bulleted events, none of which I've bothered to give dates to yet (Right now I'm just getting them in chronological order and I'll determine the dates later), but if I had to guess, I think I'm only at about 2037 at this point. In working up this outline, I've found myself creating fictional technologies, company names, characters, and product names WHICH WILL PROBABLY NEVER EVEN BE MENTIONED IN THE NOVEL but that I feel I need to know for my own benefit. If I had to guess, I think I need another week to complete this. 

Once that's done, I'll create the outline of the novel. I've created two novel outlines before (one for a novel that I wrote when I was 25, and another that I wrote the first two or three chapters for maybe nine years ago, but then got too busy to finish), so I feel pretty comfortable about that process. It'll take me maybe a week to two weeks to complete that. So now I'm hoping to get started with page one by mid-November. 

I'll write again at the end of November to let you know where I am.