NaNoWriMo - The Epic Adventure

Here it is. The post I promised about my November writing challenge, NaNoWriMo.

To start, I WON! WOOOOT!! I wrote 50,053 words in 29 days. I wrote something almost everyday, even if it was only a couple hundred words. During November I functioned in the real world, but I was living in my novel word. Emails were ignored, shows recorded and as soon as Thanksgiving dinner was cleaned up, I was back at the computer.

I had THE BEST group of cheerleaders a girl could ask for. Whenever I updated my word count on Facebook, I would get motivating comments and notes on my wall. When I finished the challenge, I had this convo with my hubby:

"I couldn't have done this with out all of you."

"Yes, you could."

"But you guys made it easier." 

That's the truth. Toward the end, when I was afraid my story might run out of steam before I reached the 50K mark, the belief you all had in me kept me typing (and not crying). Thank you.

Here's what I learned about myself:

1) I can write an entire novel, with a beginning, middle and end. I'd never done that before.
2) I can write a rough draft without editing (or even rereading) as I go. It's crappy, but the story is out and I have something to work with now. P.S. I still haven't read any of it.
3) Deadlines are my friend.
4) I am most efficient and creative when writing at Starbucks at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday night.
5) I truly enjoy writing (duh). When the challenge was over I felt like I was leaving summer camp. Excited to get back home to my own bed, but bummed to leave my new friends.

What a ride! See you next year NaNo!

It's Begun - Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon

NaNoWriMo ... I can see how this drives writers crazy.

I'm on Day 2 and doing fairly well so far. I'm a little above my target word count (YAY!) and I've been doing pretty good about not editing. I have to admit that I have gone back and changed a word here or there, but I haven't done anything major. For a girl who loves to make things right as she goes, this is a huge step. The way I've gotten past the urge to edit is to write as quickly as I can and not look back. I'm taking the NaNo tagline "Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon" quite seriously. I've abandoned my ways and flying by the seat of my pants.

Along with this "seat of my pants" thing comes the delightful feeling of "Holy. Crap. This is the WORST thing I've ever written. I mean seriously, why am I even doing this? There's no rescuing this motha." It's daunting to push these thoughts aside and keep going. It's tough to keep your faith alive, when you are the one trying to take it down. I'm starting to believe that it's not the word count or the time frame that drives participants to pulling out their hair and crying into their lattes. It's the epic struggle within us all that we're not good enough, interesting enough or talented enough to be writers.

The cool thing is, we're all writers. Whether one person reads our work or a million, we all writers because we simply put words on a page.

Final Thought: I got my editing fix with this blog! Take that NaNo!!! :)

NaNoWriMo

I've attempted NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, www.nanowrimo.org) the past two years, but like blogging, it never stuck. The object of the event is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. The key is quantity, not quality. Don't worry if it sucks! Don't delete anything! Just keep writing until you get to 50K. You can make it not suck later, after you've recovered from writing 1,667 words everyday for 30 days.

It's a tough assignment, especially since it occurs in November. Who's bright idea was that anyway? Let's challenge writers to write a novel on the eve of the holiday season! That being said, I have an awesome writer friend who was a winner 2 years ago (you win if you finish) and she told me that she wrote over Thanksgiving with the whole family in the house. That's not even the best part. The smoke detector went off that weekend and before she evacuated the house she grabbed her laptop because dammit she had 47K words and she wasn't losing them! P.S. It was a false alarm! All is well.

I've learned some things about myself this year. I've raised a lot of money for breast cancer research, education and assistance. I walked 39.3 miles to raise awareness for the disease. I've now maintained my blog for several weeks (a record!). If I can do those things, then I can do this. Life's too short to not give it the ole college try. In conclusion, I'm going to do it!

I probably better figure out what I'm going to write about ...