"It was a dark and stormy night...."
Dear Reader,
I’ve been toying with the idea of participating in National Novel Writing Month. I have some questions.
I don’t write fiction. I’ve tried. But sometimes the words that wind up on the page are only a portion of what’s going on in my head. I forget that my reader isn’t in there with me. Can you participate in this by writing non-fiction?
Do you have to write every single day? What if the kids are pukey or the dog has diarrhea? What if the hubby is jealous that my laptop is getting more action than he is? What if the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t stop ringing my bell? God understands I have a deadline, right? How do you compensate for these problems?
Is there room in this world for people who write about the goofy crap that happens to them? Blogging is different from publishing. Would someone even consider purchasing a book filled with the scattering moments of my truly bizarre mind?
Since Thanksgiving is at my house this year, is it appropriate to skip dinner because I haven’t met my word limit for the day?
I’m doing it again. I’m worrying it to death.
I guess I am just going to have to pull a Ray Romano and AIS myself.
Ass In Seat.
Write.
Right?
Always,
Miranda
“Good writing takes enormous concentration.” –Charles Schultz
Related articles
- Angelique’s NaNoWriMo survival guide (angeliquemichaels.wordpress.com)
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- Taking the NaNoWriMo Plunge (sphillipspellet.wordpress.com)
Do it! This will be my 4th year. It’s about 1667 words a day. If you write all the random crap that comes into your head as it shows up, you can crank that out in no time! (The hardest part for me is not editing as I go. Once I realized my word count was much higher when I stopped editing, it certainly helped motivate me to write with reckless abandon!)
There are people that do work on non-fiction for the contest, so never fear. You won’t be alone!
Join us!
Thanks so much for your words of encouragement! I am currently suffering a crisis of confidence because blogging is as close as I’ve come to really putting my neck out there. Thanks so much for reading!
It doesn’t have to be necessarily fiction. Don’t worry it’s better to write everyday but it’s not compulsory. Write when you have free time. The most important thing is that 50000 words should be written by the end of November. Good Luck!
Thanks! I’m just nervous. This will be my first one so I’m a little anxious.
What I do is set a schedule of when I am going to write and for how long. Make sure you give yourself a nice, huge, headstart at the beginning if you do. Make a goal to hit 3000 words your first few days. You’ll be glad you did later.
Thanks for the advice. I was actually thinking about starting out like gangbusters so that later in the month, when I know I will start to falter, I won’t have to be so hard on myself. Thanks for reading!
Do it! Following the prompting of friends, I did NaNoWriMo ’04 with my autobiography. A couple of days, I wrote only 1,000 words; on another, 12,000. All told, I’d completed the 70k-ish word book with more than a week left in November.
Oh, look! I searched my email for word count and found the following:
20 Nov 2004
date – total words
11.3 – 2864
11.4 – 6408
11.5 – 8128
11.6 – 10,845
11.7 – 13,181
11.8 – 14,957
11.9 – 18,131
11.10 – 20,185
11.11 – 25,721
11.12 – 30,519
11.13 – 36,079
11.14 – 38,682
11.15 – 51,116
11.16 – 54,640
11.17 – 58,274
11.18 – 62,864
11.19 – 70,005 – fini!
Writing all those words left me with a hankering for writing more, so I decided to see if I could write a novel in a week. Here’s another note found in my email:
29 Nov 2004
Six days and 67,000 words later, I’ve written a novel, and I’m now going to sleep for 19 years. Good night.
So would I advise it? Heck yes! When you abbreviate the amount of time you have to write, you also drown out the “is this good enough?” voice that keeps you from writing. Sure, it makes editing a heckuvalot more heinous, but the thing about editing is . . . you never get to that stage at all if you don’t write first!
Count me as a “yea” vote.
Holy smokes, that’s a lot of words! Two days?! You are a beast! I truly am thinking of doing it. I just have to decide what to write about. Thanks for the words of encouragement!
Wow, girl!! I’m seriously in awe of you!
That’s a crazy amount of words, isn’t it? Go Deborah!
I love the AIS comment! That was a great episode!
Sure, I think you should do it. Of course, that’s advice coming from someone who has actually no intention of doing it. At least not this year…
Great advice is great advice, regardless of whether or not you’ve done it. Thanks for the enouragement, regardless! I AIS my husband constantly–he’s such a pokey puppy!
I would AIS my husband, too, except he’s usually the one who’s driving.
Wow, how is it that I don’t know about this project? I’m blogging my way to a memoir right now, so I like Deborah’s idea of doing that. Sounds like nonfiction would work fine. I think you should do it!
By the way, I loved your post on Mark’s blog! I’m subscribing to yours.
Kathy
I didn’t find out about it until it was over last year. I am trying to work up the courage. Thanks for reading and subscribing!
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It’s all worth it
At the end of just 1 month, you would be a proud author of a novel!!!
All the best!
I know this is supposed to be a “let it all hang out” kind of experience, but the control freak in me is freaking out! What kind of quality are we looking at here?
@ MD evilnymph: Thanks for that info, I am trying to get my brain geared toward it but don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. Daily might be too much right now but I may still try, have to be away for a bit so not sure… will see…
@ Miranda, love the AIS remedy, LOL I think you should just let it all loose, let it be whatever it is because if we try to “police” as we go, we’ll likely not only impede the process but maybe even halt, I dunno, when I wrote a mini novella in a 3 day weekend (110 pages), I didn’t have time to check anything, just went for it. Yes, it could be much better. No, I don’t regret it. Well, maybe. LOL
Right now I’m wondering what I should write about. I’m not good at fiction, but don’t know if I have enough to write 70,000 words of stuff like my blog posts. Hmmm…..
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I signed up last night…here I am, frantically reading every blog on NaNo I can find. Love seeing the word counts above, love the idea of letting it hang. To tell you the truth, all those posts that caution plotting are making me more nervous. I’ve already determined, this first year at least, that being open to the experience means NoNo plans,
Cheers, Robin
I agree! No plans! All the way, Robin! Thanks for reading.