Nanowrimo: Day Thirteen

I've read recent posts about the stupidity of Nanowrimo and how all it does is encourage very bad writing. The writers seem to dismiss the exercise, and that's all that it is, as a waste of time.

For me, Nanowrimo experience was key in getting me to overcome the internal editor that needs to be in storage during the initial creative process. When you have a certain amount of words to get out in a day, it floods the internal editor and finally shuts it up.

Nanowrimo also gets a writer into the habit of daily writing. Serious daily writing. It challenges the commitment level a writer thinks they have for their project. Every time I sit down to watch television or a movie on Netflix, I have to ask myself why I am doing this instead of my writing. That kind of double-checking is not in place if I don't have the pressure of a big writing deadline every day.

Finally, when all is said and done, Nanowrimo gives the writer a real sense of accomplishment and good feeling for having seen it through to the end. Even though my novel does not qualify for the Nanowrimo contest because I began writing it in dribs and drabs a few years ago, I am really dedicated to getting the novel done. After that, I can rewrite and add and embellish.

I am going to throw another photo of my forebears on this post to remind all of you that everyone used to dress in a formal manner all the time, and aren't we lucky as shit? The above photo is of some cousins who, according to German custom at the time, went for a walk every Sunday after church. I love the natural movement of this photo.

Nanowrimo: Day Nine

It is harder going now. There was a major shift in action and the territory is more emotionally difficult.

The last time I did Nanowrimo, my novel was a murder mystery. The emotions there weren't complicated at all. Bad guy killing people from the same workplace. Witness to the murder was the cat, who herself kills all the time, and so observed the action one killer to another.

With this novel, a lot of feelings are coming up for me. It makes it harder to slog through the thing. It's 11:30 p.m. almost and I feel guilty having only written 1,000 words today.

My husband Justin writes at this pace on a regular basis. He is incredibly prolific.

See the website for NaNoWriMo
See community events around NaNoWriMo in South Carolina.
See Wikipedia's entry on NaNoWriMo.

Nanowrimo: Day Six

I added two thousand words. Just finished, in fact. Since I am behind schedule so much, I plan to add another two thousand words later on today. So far, since this novel was halfway written before Nanowrimo, I've got 32,000 words in total. That gives me the rest of November to write 13,000 words.

It 's not the idea of writing 13,000 words that's the problem. As I've complained about before, I don't know how I'm going to resolve the action and wrap up the novel. I just don't know how it is going to end. Hmmm. I'm starting to get an idea...

Just to add pizazz to an otherwise very dull blog post, I will add a photo of some ancestor from the dawn of the twentieth century.

See the website for NaNoWriMo
See community events around NaNoWriMo in South Carolina.
See Wikipedia's entry on NaNoWriMo.

Nanowrimo: Day Three

Didn't do anything today. Got completely tied up trying to find out why Google Adwords halted my ad campaign. Worked on it for hours.

Alas, tomorrow is another day. I still don't have any idea of how I am going to end the novel. I keep hoping that the story will evolve and the ending will come to me as I'm typing.

See the website for NaNoWriMo
See community events around NaNoWriMo in South Carolina.
See Wikipedia's entry on NaNoWriMo.

Nanowrimo: Day Two

Today is day two of my epic effort to finish my novel. I wrote just under two thousand words today. Once you get into a groove with it, the story just starts flowing. That's what happened last time I did this project.

The problem with my last novel, a murder mystery, was that I had no clear idea of the resolution. There was a witness to the murder, a cat. So the critical parts of the story are told from a cat's point of view. Remembering that cats are killers themselves, I thought would make an interesting choice.

Somehow it all fell apart at the end, though. I forced myself to finish it, to make up some ending that seemed halfway reasonable. I've got that thing lying around here somewhere. Of course in the age of computers, that means my hard drive.

So it is all starting to spill out. The new novel, I mean. This one I really like. Again, I don't know how it is going to end or what the resolution will be. At what point am I supposed to figure that out?

See the website for NaNoWriMo
See community events around NaNoWriMo in South Carolina.
See Wikipedia's entry on NaNoWriMo.

Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month

Do it! Writing novel in a month is hard work. The first one I did was rather like a gauntlet. You have a goal to get to the end while you are being hit by other priorities and your own doubts. Still, you forge ahead. When you are done you have a great feeling of accomplishment, and a well-deserved one at that.

Be prepared to hate your own work. It's a phase. Don't take it too seriously. You will vacillate between hating the novel-in-process and rehearsing national television appearances. Don't take that too seriously, either.

The first time I observed Nanowrimo was a few years ago. I set the goal of writing two thousand words a day, with the eventual goal of 50,000 words for a complete novel. I mentioned something to a co-worker and soon it became a thing where I was asked how many pages I had written so far and I would go into this explanation about how reformatting changes that and I wrote two thousand more words. "How many pages did you write?" came the daily reply. Then I would break down and tell them.

Let me tell you what works about Nanowrimo. You get the novel written. The process taught me valuable lessons as a writer about turning off the internal editor. When you have that much to write in a given time period, there is no time to second-guess yourself.

Part of the writing process is to recognize the different types of thinking that go into a creative writing project. One part is the raw exodus of feeling and idea from your mind and soul. The other is to review what you have written, examine it, and to change parts of it. Yet another is editing for grammar and spelling. Still another is to contemplate the pieces that are missing or are duplicative. Each part takes another area of the brain to complete. It cannot be done simultaneously. Recognize that and consciously decide which task you are doing now. Then do that task.

Let the novel surprise you. Write only for yourself. You really need to be interested in the book you are writing. The process of writing the book should be fun for you. I wrote and produced a play called Felony about twelve years ago. The primary regret that I have from that process were the compromises I made to pander to my idea of what would be popular.

So be brave, braver than I was back then. Write it, feel it, be it. No compromises.

See the website for NaNoWriMo
See community events around NaNoWriMo in South Carolina.
See Wikipedia's entry on NaNoWriMo.