NaNoWriMo’ing
As some of you may be aware, I have chosen to take part in NaNoWriMo this year. For those who are not in the ‘know’, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. Basically, you are expected to write 50,000 words during the month of November. Yes… 50,000 words.
I didn’t come by this decision easily. I work full-time, have a large family (wife, four kids and a needy dog), not to mention a lot of interests which take up a lot of my time. That being said however, NaNoWriMo is a finite project (has a very clear end-date). I can handle that.
I have not had the chance (nor the drive) to take on any large-scale writing projects for a while now. For those who don’t write, or rather write long pieces, it may be hard to grasp why anyone who put off their dream. The thing is, writing a novel takes one hell of a chunk of time (and energy).
NaNoWriMo knows this, but what they try to do is just get you writing. Forget about the planning, the excrutiating hours of research, the agony of trying to find the right word/sentence/analogy. Just write. Write hard, write fast… write. Quantity, not quality.
You may stumble upon quality, but try not to concern yourself with seeking it.
Consider it a writing kick in the toosh.
Write.
I can’t explain why this appeals to me right now at this point in my life… but it does. I’d heard about this project before but always dismissed it as I wanted to take more time for my (unfinished) book. However, now that some time has passed and I am left looking back at what we’ll assume are well-written passages without any endings, I’m starting to find the notion of quantity vs quality more appealing… just get the damn book out of my head and onto paper.
When I started thinking seriously about taking part in this, I had to quickly get things in order in my life so that I would have the time to devote myself entirely to this novel. I started doing the math to figure out how much I will have to write per day in order to hit my target.
Seeing as I only just decided to do this a couple days ago, I haven’t had a lot of time to plan my novel. Who knows, perhaps the rush of planning quickly will help… perhaps it is all part of NaNoWriMo.
I initially thought I would be working on a literary piece, however I spent the better part of the day yesterday writing out an outline for it, and without fail, I could not plot it out to novel-length. I believe the concept I had would make a wonderful short-story, however I really don’t think I can drag it out to 50,000 words.
So I started thinking about alternate stories that I have considered writing. I ruled out any pieces that I had begun working on (as you cannot have written any words toward the 50,000 for NaNoWriMo). This left me with old outlines and/or ideas scribbled on scraps of paper.
One that I had strongly considered writing was a fantasy novel. It’s not that I have read a lot of fantasy in my life (barely any), and I have certainly never written any, so why would I choose to write such a piece?
Well, because the idea came to me, and I believe it is worth writing. I like the concept and I believe it has a lot of life. Also, I think the characters are very interesting (especially the main).
I started working on an outline for this fantasy yesterday after I’d decided I couldn’t make the literary piece work for NaNoWriMo.
Talk about a last minute decision… I changed my proposed book the day before I was due to start writing it.
That being said, the outline flew out of the pen like it was meant to happen. I literally used an entire training pad (and pen) writing notes, quotes, outlines, battle scenes, etc. I couldn’t stop writing, and the impression that I got was that this would be a fun piece to write… and that’s important to me.
If I’m going to do this, I would really like to have fun.
So I will continue to update this blog and let y’all know how it is going. I will post segments of the book as I am working on it, though I will not post all of my work (as I am unsure there would be enough interest… not everyone enjoys reading fantasy). Still, I will keep you all up to date on how it is going.
I started writing first thing this morning, though haven’t gotten too many words in as I am in training for the week.
Talk about a killer first line though;
“What many people fail to realize is that sorcery, much like the common cold, is an illness.”
