Nearly Nano

That's National Novel Writing Month (November 1st to 30th) to the uninitiated. Starting at midnight, I’m writing 1700 words a day for thirty days and will finish the month with slightly over 50,000 words.

Last year I made my goal. The least I wrote per day was about 1300 words, the most was 3500 (to make that final push and go over the target a few days early). As long as you average out to 1667 at least. You can’t have too many 1300 word days and expect to win.

Last year I won. I know it’s doable. If you go into this with the right mindset, you need to write quickly and freely, not worrying about how well you’re writing or if everything is grammatically perfect. You can’t go back and agonize that your plotting or characterizations aren’t perfect. You can’t edit. Not until December first. You don’t have to finish your novel.

The best achievement with NaNo is showing you proof that you can write a good amount of words in one month. Maybe you couldn’t keep it up every month, but if you want to be a writer – to write at least one novel – you wouldn’t need to. Even if you took three or four months to write 100,000 words and another month or two to edit and a few more months for it to make the rounds of your more literate friends for grammar polishing and plot first aid, that’s still a finished book a less than a year. One that’s in pretty good shape, hopefully, by the end of the process. Maybe even a book that’s close to publishable.

This year I’m nervous. I’m afraid of freezing. Afraid of the dreaded sophomore slump. Afraid that I’ll care too much about how this work turns out and not be able to tell myself each day, as I sit down to write, “well I’m going to work on my crappy novel now.”

It worked last year. If I set out deciding that what I wrote would be garbage, it helped keep me going.

Last year I my aim was to prove to myself that I could write the amount. My 50,000 words needed quite a bit of editing and rewriting to fix plot holes, but for the most part it flowed much better than I thought I would.

This year I’m trying to exceed last year’s goal. I’ve worked harder beforehand on plotting and structure. I’ve tried to think of plot points that would drive the story onward instead of just meandering about (a flaw in last year’s work). I’m not expecting the writing to be any better or worse than last year, but I do hope, at the end of this, the story will hang together more tightly.

Hmmm… that’s 509 words (for the whole blog; I didn’t do a word count until I finished this). About three times more than that, and I’ll have a day’s word count. It’s not a matter of luck; it’s determination. Here’s hoping I have some of both though.