buckling down!
okay. today is my first official NaNoWriMo writing day. it's just after 10am, and i plan to start at 11. the goal for today is 3000 words. (pardon me while i dry heave a little.) if i can manage to write more than that, awesome. but if i squeeze out fewer... well, that'll just make tomorrow even harder. i'd like to build up as big a cushion as i can when i have time, so that i don't fall behind on days when i have appointments and screenings and other writing to do.
yesterday, i went for a long walk through the fall leaves to clear my head, calm my nerves and hopefully let in some inspiration. as the day progressed, i bounced around ideas and stories, started to totally hate what i hadn't even yet begun to write, debated whether i should perhaps shoot for an out-of-my-comfort-zone genre like mystery or fantasy or horror (i decided no), considered scrapping this mission altogether, wondered what ever possessed me to sign up for this competition in the first place, weighed alternative career choices... then, as i watched Law & Order: SVU, i suddenly came up with a (thin and rather flimsy but good-enough) thread that would carry the proposed action forward. because it's one thing to come up with some characters and a setting, and another to cement a point to the whole thing.
the rules for NaNoWriMo are flexible enough that you just need to focus on quantity, not quality. the point is not to write the best novel, or even a good one, but to hit that 50K word count. in fact, one of their biggest and most important suggestions is not to revise ANYTHING in november -- don't go back and edit the previous day's, or even previous hour's, work. just keep moving forward, even if you know what you've just written is absolute garbage (because, often, that's exactly what it'll be). "december is for revision," they say. "november is for writing."
so, in about 40 minutes, that's what i'm going to do.
(interesting. this entry is about 340 words and took me 20 minutes. perhaps 3000 before bed is do-able!)
6 comments:
I hope the day went so well that for long periods of time, you forgot that you were writing because you became engrossed in the story.
i don't know that i'd go that far, but i was surprised at how much i was able to churn out in about six hours of writing.
i also found myself getting hung up on details -- i think i spent a good 20 minutes trying to find out what degrees vassar offered in the 1940s.
LOL The perfectionist in your couldn't just list Music, Art History, and English, and move along. Doing things like that is giving yourself cook time, time to consider where you might be going next, to look for the thread.
ha! funnily enough, i eventually just figured a history degree would suffice and would probably be something vassar offered! i needed something generic without being overly generic.
even after 20 minutes of googling, i couldn't find a definitive list. so, history it was! :-D
Wait... Vassar? Are you writing the long-promised girls' school story? :D
ha!
alas, no. that's still on the to-do list. i just needed a prestigious northeastern university where a forward-thinking young woman would go. it's just for the back story, i'm afraid.
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