So this is my second year participating in NaNoWriMo, and so far, day one has gone well. I’m at a little over 800 words and I hope to pump out another 200 before night’s end, squeezing them between fixing dinner, working on my blog posts, tweeting, soccer and bedtime routines.
Last year, I was about halfway through the novel I’m currently writing when I decided to work on a second idea for NaNoWriMo. The thought scared me, not because I would sit down and write, write, write, but because it is unlike the process I normally use, which is to write a chapter, stop and edit until I feel it is solid, and then move on to write the next chapter.
Sitting down and writing a few hundred pages WITHOUT editing one little word? Daunting!
And yet, at the end of the month, I finished about 2/3rds of the book, which, I will now admit, has remained in its folder under My Documents since last November.
But that’s okay . . .
I didn’t think much about participating this year because that novel I was halfway through writing last year when I participated is now almost completed. I’m finishing up my climatic chapter (damn is it tough!), and I have one chapter left to write after that, which will be about ten pages in length. All told, my novel will be around 325 pages when completed.
My main goal: To finish up this novel by month’s end and begin a final edit in December, for the next NaNo event.
However, I started reading tweets and emails regarding NaNoWriMo just about the time I began mapping out the idea for the next novel I plan to write; and one day, like snapping my fingers, it clicked: I would participate this year by way of writing up my next novel idea in a very rough draft.
An internet writing group to which I belong began circulating messages about NaNo, and a few commented they wouldn’t participate because they didn’t think their writing would be worth much if they tried to crank it out in thirty days.
I get the reasoning, but I believe the only writing that can never be written is the one not put down on paper.
My thought: I can pump out a general story idea in a month’s time and have at least a very sketchy rough draft to work with when it comes time to pick up this story and go. And that’s what writing is to me anyway: You don’t start writing beautiful words; you start writing beautiful ideas, and then you spend hours breathing those words to life.
I don’t anticipate the words I write this month will be publishable when I’m done. I’m not looking for that. I am, however, hoping I get my next basic idea down on paper, even in a very rough form, so I have a place to begin when it is time.
Novels may not be written in publishable format in one month, but they are never publishable if they are never started.
Happy NaNoWriMo 2011! May the words be with you . . .
