The point of participating in National Novel Writing Month is to turn off your inner editor and write, write, write. The 50,000 words you have accumulated at the end of the month can be edited or left alone.
Last year I weaseled out 35K words. This year I’ve just broken 10K. The month isn’t over, but I find myself horribly unmotivated. In 2004, I wrote with reckless abandon; although a lot of the story was good, most of the writing was 100% unusable and uneditable. Last year and this year, it seems like I am just unwilling or unable to turn off that inner editor that is saying “If you write loads of crap, the law of diminishing returns is enacted immediately.”
I’m breaking one of Nano’s rules: Each year writers are to begin a new project. To be fair, I’m not sure if Nano enacts the “new project” rule to mean that you mustn’t cut and paste words written before Nov. 1, or if Nano wants totally new characters and storylines along with new writing. Since my first Nano in 2004, I’ve been working on the same concept. I can’t call it the same story, as it has progressed and changed over the years, but it is basically the same novel with more or less the same characters. I am very serious about writing and publishing a novel. It’s been a life-long goal, and I’m trying to stay focussed. My plan was to use Nano as the motivation to work on missing scenes and storylines from my novel.
As much as I want to accomplish the 50G goal, I’m not quite sure it is the best use of my time. It was very painful to weed through the bad writing from 2004. I still haven’t done it all yet. Does moving forward toward publication include Nano-style first draft? How are you doing NANO?
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Overall, that sounds like a wondrous thing, ans national novel Writing Month may be a good way to break me out of my doldrums.
I can totally understand where you’re coming from when you speak of motivation. For writers, its hard to come up with the idea, see it through, then transfer it to the written word.
But you’re in good shape; I might jave to join up as well, to get my creativity back on track..
-dcw.
I’ll say.. I am no writer. I’m doing nano just for the satisfaction of saying that i was able to write a story that was more than 5 pages long.
But from what i am learning about the process it seems that everyone says that first drafts are crappy. It’s pain to read the things that you wrote poorly, because we expect something to much better from ourselves. But if you stive for something closer to perfection (but not necessarially perfection) from your first draft you may never finish and publish a novel anyhow.
I’m having a bit of a hard time now too. I’m not having as much fun as in that first week. This weekend i expected to push big numbers and i have barely scrapped by with a 1667. It’s definately getting more rough as the month wears on.
i’m doing my best to live in the moment with my novel. i already did a few things that i’m sure i’ll roll my eyes at when i go back and read, but for now, out of sight, out of mind.
Want to start a word war with me? maybe we’ll both up our production. 🙂
NOt sure about word war, Calla. I’m sure I’d lose at this point. Living in the moment is a good clue, I’ll try to do that. Perhaps I’ll get some good descriptions out of it, if my characters don’t have anything to say. And DCW, hurry up and sign on. Can’t hurt!
I’ve posted my thoughts on this over at my blog. It is a fairly long post, so I won’t reproduce it here. Stop by and have a look, and then pump out some words.
NaNoWriMo Hand Wringing
http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/2603
tis sad 🙁 to hear that you are unmotivated. Not the girl that I know. Maybe have a little break then think again about it…
Maybe! I’ll keep you all uptodate. Probably mucking through shite writing is better than not getting my 50k in. Time to just give in to the Nano, huh?