It's that time of year again! I looked at my author info and it says I've been participating in NaNo since 2011. That year getting through the 50k was hell. The stress of writing so much made me physically sick and I had to stop for almost two weeks in the middle. I only won that year thanks to my OCD and stubbornness not allowing me to give up on something I had set out to do.
Fast forward five years and it's a whole different story. My writing group did our own NaNo in September. I wrote 85k in two weeks. A full novel in two weeks. I'm still amazed just thinking about it. Don't get me wrong, it's nothing pretty. Thanks to poor planning the characters completely flipped a quarter of the way through the story and every second word is a typo. But it's a framework that I can build upon with edits.
Now that I know I can write insane amounts I've set myself a goal of writing a full novel this November. Since I can't for the life of me seem to be succinct, the novel will probably end up being about 100k. On top of this, I want to edit the novel I wrote in September and get out a few pieces of fic that I've had in my head for months that just don't seem to want to cooperate.
Having checked my buddy list, only about a quarter seem to have created novels and are participating. It would be nice to have people to chat to during the month when I'm stressing out about everything. So if you're participating this year, my username is Write_Obsession.
See you on the other side!
You definitely have the right idea about first drafts being messy. That's what I need to drill deep into my brain: they can be a total wreck! It's okay! Let them be garbage!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, that was my pep talk to myself on your blog. Good luck with NaNo, but I doubt you'll need it since it's only about finishing, thankfully.
Now you know it can be done and then some. Go after it!
ReplyDeleteNot participating this year I'm afraid.
Glad you're participating again! Good look and have fun!
ReplyDeleteWell done! I keep trying to get it into my students' heads that first drafts can be as messy as they like, as long as they're finished. They can always rewrite - and in these days of word processing it's much easier than when I was growing up and it was first handwritten, then the typewriter and lots of typos and then typing the whole thing again. But they will go writing a few sentences and fiddling, then deleting the whole thing and start again... Sigh!
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