Well, I wasn’t going to say anything until (or is that unless) I actually finished, but I’m involved in this crazy NaNoWriMo thing. If you don’t know what that is it’s a mad November tradition when thousands of people around the world sign up and attempt to finish a 50,000 word novel in a month. So, that’s where my writing has been happening of late (I spent the last few weeks of October trying to prepare but in the end it’s turned out that I’m winging it anyway). Even writing this post I’m thinking “hey, this is about 300 odd words I should be adding to the novel.” Sinéad rumbled me though so I’m risking jinxing myself to blog about it.
I’m going to hazard a generalisation here and guess that a lot of bloggers harbour a secret wish to write a novel. I know it won’t apply to everyone but I’m guessing there’s a lot of us. I hate admitting it, mostly because it seems like everyone and their maiden aunt is working on the next New York Times bestseller these days and, let’s face it, until you’ve done it you’re just one of a million wannabes. Sinéad’s post about blogging and writing struck a chord with me because I know that I’ve been using blogging as an excuse to avoid writing anything longer. A blog post is quick and you get instant feedback and you move on to the next subject, like a quick writing fix. Actually sitting down day after day to extract something long enough to call a novel is a totally different animal.
So NaNo is my way of seeing if I’ve got it in me to write something of that length. I’m not even going for something of quality because what I’m writing so far is awful! I’m so glad I don’t have time to go back and read through it because it’s making me cringe as it’s going down on the page. But hey…it’s going down on the page and that’s progress. OK, I’m a little behind…you need to hit about 1700 words a day to make 50,000 by the end of the month and I’m about 2000 words behind schedule. I’m not finding it easy at all, every word is like blood from a stone and avoiding the word count button is proving almost impossible, but I’m still optimistic. Check back with me in a couple of weeks and we’ll see if that’s still the case.
I have to tip my hat to Ann Scanlan who is also NaNo-ing. She has put me to shame since she’s already gone past 30,000 words and it’s only the end of the first week! Ann…when do you sleep?
6 replies on “NaNo-ing”
Oh God, I didn’t mean to out you after seeing your comment on Ann’s blog!
Fair play for doing NaNo, I wish I could streamline my life and just get down to it.
S
Oh good luck! I hope you and the others will publish some of what you’re writing?? I started my blog TOL to avoid writing a masters’ dissertation and look where that got me! Now that I’m heading into a PhD I’m thinking I should start a few more distrationary projects.
Haha, Sinéad don’t worry about it. Not telling anyone was just me giving myself a get-out clause in case it all went pear-shaped. You did me a favour really 🙂
Annette, I’m not so sure I’ll produce anything anyone would want to read. Maybe after the third or fifth draft there’ll be something I won’t be too mortified to show.
I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year, but instead I’m participating in NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month! My posting was getting slower and slower during the summer, and the challenge was a perfect way to get back on track with the blog.
I was thinking about taking part in the novel writing frenzy too, I love writing and I could use some practise to lower the motivation-killing self-criticism. Maybe next year. Or the one after. 🙂
LOL, I saw that Lauranen and considered it but finally came to my senses. Whatever about writing a novel in a month, writing a blog post everyday is just craziness! 😉
For what it’s worth, I’m finding NaNo to be very effective against that self-critic. Usually that’s what kills me but with such a mad deadline there’s just no time.
Thanks, Claire. Congratulations on making it into the five-figure realm.
To answer your question, I sleep from 9/10pm-4am. But I don’t have a child or a dog or anyone else who can’t manage their own intake and output.
The secret is to just write – even if it’s crap. Even if you hate. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing. Even if you have put in a little note in the middle of a chapter saying -Figure this out later- and then jump onto another bit.
This morning, I wanted to do 3K, but I was sort of stuck. All of my scenes were dead-ended and so I wrote around in the literary version of a cul-de-sac until I spotted a way out of my troubles.
I used to be very persnickety about my fiction writing. I wanted to know the whole plot before I started. You know what happened – I never started anything. When I gave myself permission to figure it out as I went along, I was able to start and finish projects.
NaNo has been great because I sent the Internal Editor packing and I’m just pouring out words and will worry about it later. In truth, I’d say only about 10K-20K of these words will survive into the next draft. (And for my genre, a full book is about 80K.) So there’s still loads of work ahead.
Do a couple hundred words whenever a scene or some dialogue pops into your head. Let your fingers do your thinking for you. You’ll get there. 🙂