So, I finally decided to bite the bullet, and give
NaNoWriMo a shot. I'm about 3/5ths of the way through. (That makes sense right? 30,000 words out of an eventual 50,000? Ah, math, where have you been since that last high school Calculus class?)
What's NaNoWriMo, you ask?
I'll let them explain it (from the NaNoWriMo website):
"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."
And I must admit, I am writing a lot of crap... ohhhh yeah! December will be NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) in my house, that's for sure.
But issues of quality aside, trying to write 2000 words a day, every day, has been an amazing experience so far. It's way too easy to come home from a stress filled, crazy day of work, collapse in front of the tele, and watch whatever dreck happens to be on. Having an arbitrary word count goal each month is a great incentive not to collapse into a brainless heap at the end of the day.
AND, surprise surprise, I've completely forgotten how much I love to write. Forgotten how great it is to lose complete track of time as the story unfolds beneath your fingers.
So, I'm at 32 something something something, and still going strong. Yeah, there are days when it definitely sucks! No doubt. But those are the ones that I most need to spend writing.
I've completed the 50,000 words necessary for me to be considered a "winner" of NaNoWriMo. It's a bit bittersweet, actually, as I'm pretty certain that the damn story is only about 2/3 finished at best. I wonder if I'll be able to keep up the momentum to crank the rest of it out in the next few days/weeks? I hope so. I'm sick of this damn late 80s/early 90s music I've been forcing myself to listen to. The book is set in '92-'95, and I've been listening to the old stuff to get my head into the decade. But honestly there's only so much Primitive Radio Gods one can listen to, right? YIKES the music from the '90s sucked ass... what were we thinking?!
