NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo time is fast approaching again--for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea behind it is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I'm not sure why November since once Thanksgiving week hits, writing time is hard to come by, but this is when it happens every year.

I've tried to do NaNoWriMo a few different years, but always end up failing miserably. Part of the problem is that I am not a fast draft writer. It makes me bonkers. The go back and flesh it out later part? Totally doesn't work for me. As I'm writing, I'm getting ideas. I need to turn them over in my mind and make decisions. Going back to it even a month later (and let's face it, December is a difficult month to write at all because of the holidays and shopping and baking and events, etc.) means those thoughts and maybes are gone. Write it down? Um, why don't I just mull it over then and there and decide whether or not to use it?

Some writers love fast drafting. They love going back later to layer emotion and all the rest of it in. I don't. Once the story is told (and fast drafting is telling the story), I want to finish and be done with it. I don't want to spend another five months revising. I want to work on the next story. This is also why I don't do extensive pre-planning. Once the story is told I am ready to be done with it. It doesn't matter if it's a 40 page outline or a fast draft.

So what inevitably happens with NaNoWriMo is that I fall farther behind on word count every day. At the end of one week, It seems hopeless to ever catch up. This is usually about the time I quit. Sometimes I don't even make it a week before the hopelessness drowns me.

And despite this, I'm still contemplating whether or not to put myself back into this hell. I'm leaning toward no right now, but we'll see.

NaNoWriMo

For those unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. For the 30 days in November, people across the country will try to produce 50,000 words. This will be my sixth year participating--if I remember correctly--and I haven't reached the goal word count yet.

One year I received revisions for a book about three days into the start of NaNoWriMo, but most of the time, it's my own fault. I'm a perfectionist and I can sit and agonize over the right way to phrase something forever. This isn't what NaNoWriMo is about. It's bout writing a fast draft without worrying about plot or characters or word choice and fixing those things later.

Every year I go into it thinking this time I'll change my nature. I will fast draft. I will fix later.

And somewhere along the month, I'll lock up. My innate nature warring against what I need to do to get 50,000 words in 30 days. It gets very discouraging and I wasn't planning to participate this year, but then I thought what the heck? Maybe this year I can do it.

I'm going to try at least.

If you want to join me, you can buddy me at: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/bugalootwo

NaNo Fail

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and takes place every November. This is the second time I've decided to do it and the second time I've failed.

In my defense, both years that I've done it, I've been given revisions from an editor that needed to be done. But to be honest, I was failing spectacularly this year anyway. Kind of. You see, my goal wasn't to write 50,000 words like most participants in NaNo are shooting for. My goal was just to write more than usual and I was winning with that.

I have this hero and heroine, Finn and Zo, who have been in my head constantly for months and months and months. Their story isn't paranormal, although I tried my darnedest to make it become paranormal. But I really got into them and their story--until I had to drop it for revisions.

Revisions are done now, though, and even though NaNo is ending, I have a goal. It might be a tough one because the holiday season is now officially here and it's difficult to find writing time during this time of year. My plan, my hope, is to have a rough draft of their proposal finished by New Year's. Can I do it? I'm sure going to try.

NaNoWriMo

For the first time ever, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The idea is to try and write 50,000 words between Nov 1st and Nov 30th. The participants come from all levels of writing experience--from those who will be attempting their first book to multi-published authors. I've heard more and more people doing this with each succeeding year, and that's part of why I decided to try it--I wanted to be part of the camaraderie.

But that wasn't the biggest reason. The main impetus behind my signing up was a writing buddy. (I'm safe admitting this here because she doesn't read any blogs.) I've been trying to encourage her to write for the last couple of years--she's enormously talented--but haven't had much luck, so when she mentioned maybe trying NaNoWriMo, I was like yea! Then she didn't say anything else about it. That's when I had the brainstorm to suggest that I'd like to participate, but that it would be easier to do it with a friend. She'd already signed up, but since I'd already made the offer, it was too late to say, oh, well, since you were going to do it anyway, I'll just forget about it.

So I went over to the site, registered and buddied up with my friend and a few others. I have a word counter on my page. My word counter is on the buddy page of each and every one of the people who friended me.

This is when the panic began to set in.

It's stupid. I've completed books before and I've even written quite a few words in a short period of time more than once in order to make a deadline. It doesn't matter. There's something about that word counter that I find intimidating.

I've never counted words before, ever. I count pages. I'd have to do math to come up with a word count because I use the 250 words per page method. I like it because then I know exactly where I am in the book by the page number I'm on. My usual daily goal is 4 pages, which equals 1,000 words and I usually get more done on the weekends when I can write all day. I usually do around 8 pages then which works out to 2,000 words.

I can do NaNoWriMo. Maybe I won't get 50,000 words in the month, but I'm not trying to win, just participate and work on my next book. But it doesn't seem to matter; I look at that counter and become anxious. It's almost Pavlovian. I'm torn between going to the counter page over and over in an effort to inure myself to its insidious effect or avoiding it except when I have no other choice once November kicks into gear.

Of course, my anxiety might end up being for nothing. If I get revisions for Edge Of Dawn in November, I'll be dropping everything to work on them and NaNoWriMo will just have to go on without me, but in the meantime, I guess I'll just keep fretting.