Monday, November 04, 2013

Nanowrimo 2013

So I might not have mentioned it yet but I am doing Nanowrimo 2013:




National Novel Writing Month - Press Start

You may remember the challenge from last year:  50,000 words, 30 days.  The idea is to get a manuscript written in 30 days.  Not a final manuscript necessarily you understand - this is as rough as it gets.  The point is to get one writing every day.

My plan was messed up, of course.  I had not decided what I was going to write until the last second - good heavens, I had not decided I was going to do it at all until the day before.  I was waffling because I did not think that I had the time.  It is ridiculous of course - you always have time to do the things you really want to do.

The second impediment was that I thought I was not ready to write what I was going to write.  I had it all planned out in my mind:  what I was going to write about, the research I needed to do, the plot.   But I ran out of time:  the book sat unread and the day was approaching.  I had a second idea, more of an undeveloped thought than a real thing, that was laying in wait.  I grabbed it and ran.

I am about 7300 words in now - like last time, the concept seems to have taken on a life of its own and the characters have started talking amongst themselves without needing much prodding from me.  A good way to write, that - as a recorder, not a generator.

Will I finish?  I will.  I have no idea what it will look like -and having done this last year, I am far more willing to do major editing now that I know that writing all those words is not the same as having a good book (it is okay, I discovered, to cut things out).

But the exercise is good.  And I feel better after it.  That will make four books I have written in three years.

A bit of a surprise there - somewhere I turned into an author and hardly knew it.

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