Nanowrimo--one-third month update

By this point of Nablopomo, I started flagging (if it hadn't already begun by day 3). By this point in Nanowrimo, I'm... still at it. I honestly expected to have abandoned it by now.

Rather than have to come up with something new each night, I can build on what I've already written, tucking in a bit more description in this scene and playing with the tension in that one and finding my characters settle into more of a routine and even do new things I hadn't expected them to. Last night, they got into a squabble that I wasn't planning for them to have, but that has turned out to be something that they needed to do in order to, well, grow. And Nanowrimo truly is teaching me the wisdom of drafting--this draft sucks, and I'm OK with that because I can edit later.

It still feels pretentious as hell to call this glorified bit of scribbling (all 35 pages of it so far) a "novel," but I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with the idea that I may have a bit of writer in me yet. You see, this thing about making myself write every single night even if I'm 1000 words short of the 1666-words-per-day goal is... well, it's having unexpected effects. It's becoming as much a habit as my afternoon cup of tea.

My little head is starting to spontaneously generate new story ideas, ideas that I would love to run with and see what comes of them. And I intend to, yes, but it's not happening until the end of November--I have a bad track record of beginning a bazillion new things and abandoning the original one for six months or even indefinitely. If you want proof of it, I can show you my list of started crochet projects...

Anyway, I just wanted my audience of three to know that I've not fallen off the face of the earth--just a bit busy with other projects :).

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Now playing: M. Craft - Dragonfly
via FoxyTunes

National what month?

For the last two years, I have participated in National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. It was largely an exercise in self-flagellation as the month wore on. Oh, I think I had the right idea, trying to make myself write, but my heart didn't ever quite follow all the way.

Which begs the question--why did I do it in the first place? Because I never felt I had the time or inclination to do National Novel Writing Month. November is never a good time of year, especially in academia as I struggle to finish everything that needs finishing in the last quarter of a semester--the papers get longer, the grading gets more intense, and the accumulated stresses have, well, accumulated. November is probably, honestly, never going to be a good time to decide to write a novel...

...which is exactly why this year is as good a time as any. I've had ideas for a post-apocalyptic tale knocking about my head for a few years now. Might as well run with it a bit. If it absolutely blows, or if I lose interest, so be it. At least I tried, and hopefully, I'll get at least a few thousand words more on it than I did when I started.

So, here's to writing, and more specifically, embracing the idea of what Anne Lamott gleefully calls the "shitty first draft."