Starting word count: 0
Initially, I was going to start off the blog with a totally different topic; however, I figured there might be a few people reading this who are new to NaNoWriMo, and it would be a good thing to explain. So, I'll tell you about what NaNoWriMo is, what I've done with it in the past, and what this year's project is about.
Firstly, what IS NaNoWriMo? NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. This is a project where people all over the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the span of thirty days. For those of you without a calculator at the ready, that means that each and every day during the month of November, they must write a minimum of 1,667 words. Every Day. Falling behind means playing catch up. But the beauty of it is this: you are not worrying about crafting the perfect sentence (okay, I am). You are not worrying about spelling (okay, I'm a stickler there, too). You are not worrying about your grammar (got me, again!) The point of November is to get the ideas out of your head and onto the paper (or computer screen). You cannot edit what you have not written.
Of course, the hard part of this is not just the dedication to sit down every day and plod out 1,667 words, tripping your way, inching your way from November 1 through November 30, it is also allowing yourself to write absolute dreck. Giving yourself the permission to write sentences that are beyond stupid and ugly and pointless and meaningless. Or rather, for me the hard part was not the dedication. Sitting down and staring at the computer to force myself to write out the requisite 1,667 was not the issue. Nope, for me it was staring at sentences and thinking "oh dear lord. That is absolutely the worst piece of drivel I have ever seen in my entire life! Who in the world would ever want to read this!"...and then bravely plodding to the next sentence. Without editing the awful thing I had just typed. This was hard.
The cool thing about NaNoWriMo (and just so you know, a truely obsessive Wrimo -- participant in this mad experiment -- would be writing out National Novel Writing Month instead of NaNoWriMo. Every Time. Why? Simple: NaNoWriMo counts as one word; however, National Novel Writing Month counts as four. Four is better than one and gets you closer to fifty thousand words! Or, the right to stop for the day when you're pulling your hair out and wondering where you can add another unnecessary adjective!)
Oh lookie! above is an incomplete sentence. And you know what? I'm not going to fix it. Yeah. Take that, unruly sentence! So there. (that's also a prime example of NaNo Fluff, but I'm getting away with it because NaNo is the topic of my blog today. In a novel, I'd just stare at it and think it. But not today!)
As I was saying, the cool thing about NaNoWriMo is that you're not writing in the lonely vaccuum that writers face every other month. You get to meet other crazy people who are participating in this wild experiment. There are kick off parties and write ins and TGIO (thank goodness it's over) parties. There are forums on a wonderful website where we get to commiserate with one another and waste good words that we could be using in our stories fussing about how our characters won't behave themselves or complaining that our cats just totally do not get that this is the time of year we ignore them. Or that we have all this holiday planning stuff that is totally getting in the way of our novels!
So what is NaNoWriMo? it's a fun way to torture yourself ... um, challenge. Yes, that's the word. Challenge. It's a fun way to challenge yourself to write the novel you always knew you could. It is about giving yourself permission to write and to ignore all the awful, horrible, glaring mistakes you've made. To repeat yourself. To repeat yourself unknowingly. For those who are already verbose in their writing, I am sure the challenge is very different than it is for those of us who would write one word when ten could be used. I had to learn how to add adjectives. Where before I would have typed "tabby cat", during NaNo, I would force myself to type "the small grey and white tabby cat with brilliant green eyes." Huge difference. but not only that, it gave you, the reader, a great deal more information about my fuzzy little character.
NaNoWriMo has a wonderful website, and here's the fun thing: it is free, absolutely free. Sure, some of us donate because they have some absolutely great programs which they sponsor -- they encourage reading and writing in schools and actually provide materials to teachers free of charge. There are even some programs where they will lend computers in schools where they are low on that resource, just to get kids the opportunity to participate. They have summer programs and special NaNoWriMo projects for young writers. This wonderful organization called the Office of Letters and Light is about brining a love of reading and writing to everyone, artists of all ages.
Local Volunteers, called Municipal Liaisons (or MLs), organize events for the regional WriMos. I served as one of the Montgomery (River Region) MLs officially for two years (unofficially in 2009, as myself and another ML actually did the job without the title that year too!). This is the first time I have ever done NaNo as just a paticipant (and I am SO excited to not be responsible for the other things in addition to writing a novel!)
Are any of the NaNo books ever published? Actually, there is a growing list of 'graduates' so to speak. One day, I hope to have a NaNo graduate too. But if you're wondering, there are absolutely novels that started out as these fifty thousand word lightning projects and were published. One even became a movie: Water for Elephants.
As for my projects, this is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo. I've "won" three times. The first year, I wrote a novel called "the House on the Hill." I'm very proud of this project, even though I spent the entire month calling it my POS. I would not even reread the thing as I was typing it. Once I was done with a paragraph, I moved to the next, never looking back. That was important, lest I edit the tar out of the thing. I finished. Saved it and printed it. Then I waited until a week before my winner's prize from Create Space that year (a proof copy of my novel) was going to expire and sent it in. Only then, six months after finishing my first novel ever -- something I did not believe I could actually do -- only then did I read my story. And I was surprised. This unedited first rough draft was amazing. It had a great story line. And I am proud of my little POS (I now lovingly call it a POS rather than out of derision and scorn). Up until 10:30 pm on October 31 that year, 2009, I was going to write an entirely different story. But at that moment, I remembered an outline I wrote over 20 years before for a novel I had wanted to write and never found the time. But here was a month I had made the time to write. I had the time. And I knew exactly where that outline was. Imagine, putting your hands on something you wrote over 20 years previously in less than 5 minutes. That told me then how important that outline had always been to me. I had never discarded this notebook which had my character descriptions and story outline. It took me two weeks to write that story. Two weeks to write over 50,000 words. I had never found two weeks. Ridiculous.
The next year, I thought about writing the story that I had planned for 2009 and had been interrupted by my 20 year old novel (it was no longer a mere outline. Now, it was a novel.) But for some crazy reason, I decided to see what I could really do and embarked on a terrifying experiment. I was going to write a 50,000 word novel with NO outline and NO concept of what it was about on November 1. Yeah, it scared the pants off of me, but I had done great with an outline my 18 year old self had provided. What could I personally do now? Was that a one-story wonder? So I wrote. I wrote an epic story, which I hate to admit, I have not gone back to read since 2010. I have a vague notion of what it is about. I discovered about 48,000 words into it that I was writing Book Two of a trilogy. That has intimidated me so much that I cannot even edit Book Two, because I have to figure out what is going to happen in Book One. And in Book Three. The good news is that it is a story I'd love to read, if ever I can brace myself and face the challenge of Book One. Book One must be written before Book Two can be edited (I'm not concerned about spelling and typos and grammar...it's a continuity issue). And Book Three needs to be conceived before I can edit either, so that I can figure out what to set up where. See, this is why people like me need NaNoWriMo. I'm intimidated...by myself this time!
Last year was the year I did not want to do NaNoWriMo. I mean REALLY did not want to do it. However, I was an ML. And MLs lead, which meant I could not back out. So I did it again. This time, I decided my original story from 2009 deserved its moment in the sun. I had an outline. And do you know what that brat did after I finally gave in and started to write it? It took a sharp left and completely left me without a GPS signal! Characters who were supposed to die got rescued and people who were walk ons became major characters. Rude! I have no idea where this beast is going. I did my 50,000 words, and left it where it was last.... clearly a much different story than I was anticipating ... while I tried to regroup and figure out what was going on!
But this year, I'm doing something entirely different. This year, I'm "going rogue" so to speak. NaNoWriMo is about challenging oneself. However, I've proven I can make myself crank out to 50,000. What I have not proven is that I can do it every single day. Starting with effectively a word count of zero and going at least to 1,667. Yesterday's word count means nothing. This year, I want to write every single day...until November 26. I'd do November 30; however, that's Turkey Time. But for 26 days, I'll be writing a blog piece. Clearly, I've proven to myself I can follow an outline, and I can 'pants it' (fly by the seat of my pants). I can take an outline and let the story narrate itself. But can I dedicate any time past 50,000 words? That's this year's question.
However, I'm not writing a novel this year. This year, I'm writing a blog -- something I am notoriously awful at -- for the same reason I've always failed at writing before NaNoWriMo. Blogs should be inspiring. Blogs should be intelligent. They should be "worth reading." That's a lot of expectation when I'm sitting at a blank window and trying to figure out something earth shatteringly meaningful and intelligent to say! It's enough to makes someone run away in terror.
This is November. I'm going to ramble on about drivel. I'm going to repeat myself and have horribly constructed and crafted sentences. And do you know what? I do not care. This is the month when my inner editor is locked in a cage, screaming from the sidelines and shouting "what are you doing? Stop that!" and I'll gleefully stare at her and laugh while I type some awful, horrible piece of drivel.
I'm also going to be working on my 2009 novel, the POS I am incredibly proud of. There may come a short blog where I simply state "I wrote x of words for a new scene in my novel." It being November, I'm not allowed to scrap anything I write in there either. The delete button does not exist this month. This is November. And it's time to write.
Editing can come later.
The question really is not why am I participating. It is "why aren't you?"
Today's Word Count: 2,157
Total Word Count: 2,157 (yeah...beginning of the month sucks for word counts!)
(I'm not counting the word count-o-meters in my word count. That would not be right since I'm just putting that there for anyone keeping score at home :D )
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