NaNoWrMo – Trust the Process

I’ve heard about National Novel Writing Month for some years now, but always dismissed it, because I don’t need company while I’m writing. I don’t need the distraction of meetings, and I sure wasn’t interested in sharing my word count with anyone! Nor competing for a symbolic prize.

But this year, I signed up, and what changed my mind?

Well, a couple of things, probably nothing new, nothing that’s not happened to lots of other folks. Stuff we like to call real life. Primary among them is the fact that while I was publishing my first book, I went and got myself a job. It’s a pretty good and I like the work I do and the people I work with. However, I got distracted from writing, by the job, and by other things like iron poor blood.

Yes, just like this commercial. I used to walk around trying to imitate Ms. Goolagong; I never thought it would be me actually needing something like Geritol. (Thankfully there are more modern iron supplements.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk7zbV-9Kso

Then I’ve been talking to my friend Wendy, who has been nothing but encouraging, but has to be so tired of listening to me complain about how I’m not writing. When really, it’s just a matter of putting your butt in the chair and moving your fingers on the keyboard to make words come out. (Wendy always makes writing sound easy and fun!)

We’re both avid followers of Dean Wesley Smith and his bracing advice, so I thought it might be a good experiment for me to write in public. Now, Dean advises against this for most authors; he’s been doing it for a few years now, but he’s got a bazillionty books under his belt so he is more comfortable writing in public. But I thought, for a month, it would be a good way for me to get into the habit of writing again. I love doing it, I love the way it makes me feel more alive and more in touch  with what’s going on around me.

So I signed up today, and have just completed writing 1,998 words. NaNoWriMo only requires 1,667 words, so I’m way ahead of the game for now. I feel better already!

Here, just for fun, were some other impetuses that made me want to sign up.

I found this video while looking for other things. It made me laugh. I’d never heard of Kristina Horner before, but she’s very funny and sweet and I love the line where she says (sings) “I’m going to write a freakin’ book,” which has the same feeling as when you say something defiant to your parents – “I’m going to writing that freakin’ book and nobody can stop me!”

Here’s the more modern version, just as cute, with some fun graphics where she pulls words out of the air.

I think the tipping point for me, oddly, was an article, from Salon. The article is called Better Yet, Don’t Write That Novel, written by Laura Miller. She refers to NaNoWriMo as a “stunt,” and says, among other things, that writing that fast produces nothing but crap, and that “real” writers don’t need this type of encouragement. That there are more than enough novels out there and that without NaNoWriMo, plenty of good books will still be written.

In that last, she is right, at least partly. People will write books, in spite of whatever encouragement or discouragement they receive. However, isn’t it better if authors have some friendly place where they can go and connect? Maybe authors don’t need connections. I don’t mostly, but I think that connecting with authors from all over the world a pretty neat idea, and am willing to come out my cave for this one. Notably, at the time of the writing of the article, Ms. Miller was a senior editor for Salon, a markedly anti-Amazon, anti-self-publishing online magazine.

At any rate, since I disagree with Salon’s stance on self-publishing, I figure anything thing that they don’t like, such as NaNoWriMo, must be a good thing. Hence, I signed up.

I’ll be posting a word count each day in November. I’m sure there are cool apps that I could install, but I’ll just make a bulleted list and go from there. At the end of November, I’ll stop posting the word count, which can’t be very interesting to anyone not involved in the actual writing of a novel not theirs. But by that time, it’ll be 30 days later, and since it takes about twenty-one days to form a new habit, I will be well on my way to following my dream.

Word Count

November 1 – 1,998