Whee, I'm coasting on chocolate pudding and a caffiene drip.
Some people don't get it, ok most of my friends are writers, or are supportive of the writing endeavor that I've undertaken, which is making me a bit crazy (no, really?) and extremely protective of my time. I want to go see movies, I want to leave the house, but I have this invisible word counter in my head (and two on line) telling me that I need to write to get this novel out of me, to finish the 50k and see where it takes me from there. So I stay home, or I go to writing groups and write.
I was told today that the design of NaNoWriMo was forcing me to sacrifice content for word count, that essentially what I was writing wouldn't be any good because it was rushed. I tried to explain that the point of NaNoWriMo was to give a deadline and a goal to get the novel written. Because I'm one of the people who's plotted a book in my head and in notebooks and on paper and talking to friends about it for years and years and never sat down to write it down, to get it OUT. NaNo is getting me to write, character, plot, setting, getting everyone together and setting out on the greatest adventure ever told. {Ok, now I'm just swinging from the rafters.} Nonetheless, I've been writing, instead of detailing down to the eyelash my characters and the setting and how magic works and outlining decades and centuries of history before the moment I want to start. These things are vitally important to my writing, but I've already done all this, I've got a basic skeleton of my novel in my head, getting the flesh of my story is what November and NaNo is all about to me.
Ok, so I'm a wee bit crazy, and being a recluse and a bit of a crappy friend this month. I have to do this for me. And of all the things in the last year I've done for selfish reasons, this one is probably the least damaging.
Please understand. I'm not apologizing, this is who I've wanted to be since I was a tiny little girl. So I'm doing it.
For those who've supported me and written with me, and encouraged me, and shared their pudding with me, thank you from the bottom of my little novelist heart.
Joy
‘I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn’t, I would die.’ - Isaac Asimov
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4 comments:
Just being able to dedicate yourself to anything of this nature, writing daily, writing something you believe in, makes all the work you put out quality.
A tall elfin man once suggested to myself and a friend that you jsut write and write and write and some of it is good, and that is what you choose to focus on.
At the end of the month, choose what is good to you and continue to focus.
And be proud you could even comit to this month.
Personally, I've always felt that trying to produce four or five serious blog entries a week is more than enough masochism for me, but I'm convinced the more you write the better you get.
You're not likely to produce a great novel in the first writing, but if you learn from the experience what more you could you hope for?
I admire the effort and self-discipline it takes to complete something like this.
Thank you. I've come back a couple times to respond and I get choked up and abort the comment. Your encouragement means a lot to me, as a fellow writer. Thanks so much, girlzoot.
Loren, thanks for visiting and for your words of encouragement. I look forward to having time to wander off and read other people's blogs again. I've always enjoyed yours, lurker that I am.
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