… to NaNoWriMo madness.
I’m totally dumbfounded, disappointed and devastated to discover that this post, which I wrote yesterday morning as nano kickoff approached, didn’t get posted and didn’t even get saved in drafts. The header was there, but the post was empty! Where’d it go? Please don’t tell me Wordpress swallows posts!
It was a long one too, and I didn’t save it anywhere else. Waaaah. Lesson learned. I could have sworn I published it.
Onwards.
It’s NaNoWriMo, day one.
I was up at 6am because I knew I’d got a marathon to start and the story was keeping me awake. It was still dark outside when I brewed the first coffee of the day and fired up the computer.
Two hours later I had just over 2000 words so today’s target is met. Yeh! One down – 29 to go. And it’s still early in the day. I may well run over the 2000 daily target I’ve set myself. That’s all well and good providing I don’t get lazy through thinking I’m already ahead so can take it easy for a day. That will just set me on the slippery slope of being less productive rather than more. So, with that thought in mind I have to set my sights on a minimum of 2000 a day, not allowing surplus words to be carried over, although words owing will be.
I’ve got a rough outline on this story, as previous posts in the writing diary will show, but I can see that the edges of the outline are already a little smudged and by the time I’m through nanowrimo they’ll be rubbed out almost completely. That’s okay. Outlines are there to be bent, twisted and ultimately broken. They’re a rough guide to get the story started without becoming prison walls that can’t be scaled.
This is my first nano, (well, my first serious one) and it’s a long time since I’ve written to this kind of deadline and in this volume. I’ve been trogging along quite happily writing a couple of hundred words of fiction here and there on the days when I fancied doing it, writing nothing if the mood didn’t grab me, and interspersing the whole haphazard thing with dribs and drabs of nonfiction. That is not the way to be a writer. Not the kind of writer I want to be at any rate. Each to their own.
So, it’s NaNoWriMo or bust during November.
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