Okay, so I don't remember how I heard about it, but I do know that Shawna and I both attempted to write a 50,000 word novel during November. That's what NaNoWriMo is. From November 1-30, you write your ass off. You turn off the phone (unplugging the phone is a thing of the past), you put a stop on your social life (since I don't have one, this doesn't present a problem for me), and you just write and curse and write some more and maybe get a little drunk once you've reached the point where you're absolutely certain you can write no more. Or, that you can write, but you are so sure that you'll never get 50,000 words cranked out during 30 days or that you will never be the next Jane Austen/Stephen King/I can't believe I just compared those two/and so on and so forth.
It's actually a pretty good time.
I didn't complete NaNo that year. I don't remember if Shawna did or not, but I do know that she won last year.
And what do you win if you complete NaNoWriMo, you ask?
Well, you win nothing. You just gain the satisfaction of writing a novel. And, sure, it may be absolute crap or not really finished, you just have the first 50,000 words, but, by God, you stuck with that story for a month. And isn't that nice feeling of not giving up better than any sort of monetary gain?
I'm going to take that silence as a 'yes'.
I'm doing NaNo again this year. This is really the first year I don't have an excuse not to. I'm not in school anymore (have I mentioned that I still haven't told my dad that I quit grad school? I'm a dead woman), I have no real social life, and, most importantly, I HAVE AN IDEA ALREADY.
Plus, Shawna is doing NaNo again and Trista said she is "thinking about it" which, to me, may as well be a signed, dated, and notarized written contract. I think it's best to have friends also doing NaNo so that you don't totally lose your mind.
And, since I'm horrible at planning and organizing stories before I start writing them, this NaNo should be an interesting one.
Seriously, I'm a fairly organized person when it comes to plans and activities and places that aren't my room (my bookshelf is excluded from this; it's damn near immaculate in its tidiness), you would think that outlining stories would be no big deal.
Wrong-o.
I fully blame my seventh grade Social Studies teacher for my hatred of outlines. She had us write detailed outlines for each chapter in our textbook. I mean, some of these outlines were six, seven, ten pages long. I do believe I had an eleven-page one at some point that year.
And perhaps I didn't say that this happened in the SEVENTH-GRADE? I didn't do that much work in 400-level college courses, for Pete's sake!
That probably should say something about my college education, huh?
If you're reading this Western, you're a great school and I love working for you. Please don't fire me for questioning the education I got there and will be paying for over the next five-thousand years.
Right, back to the point. I don't do well with outlines. I feel too constricted using them when it comes to actually writing. The only notes I have for my NaNo are what I've emailed to Shawna and Trista. In one of those email conversations Trista says that she has a six-page detailed outline done for the story she's thinking about.
I hate her a little bit.
Okay, I don't hate her. I'm just insanely jealous that she can write outlines and not be completely stifled by them. I need to be able to just write and not have any sort of agenda. Like right now, I'm just writing. I couldn't tell you what this entry is actually about...
I'll never be a 'Blog of Note' on Blogger if I keep up with these entries that make absolutely no sense, will I?
That's probably my own little cue to wrap this puppy up and come full-circle.
For more information on NaNo and how you can join the madness with me, Shawna, Trista, and many others, check out NaNoWriMo.org.
Kay: I went out... to buy cigarettes and I figured out how to kill Harold Crick. Penny: Buying cigarettes?
Kay: As I was... when I came out of the store I... it came to me.
Penny: How?
Kay: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method.
- Stranger Than Fiction
Kay: As I was... when I came out of the store I... it came to me.
Penny: How?
Kay: Well, Penny, like anything worth writing, it came inexplicably and without method.
- Stranger Than Fiction
1 comment:
Three years participating, won the last two. With story of the dead dad and three boys and football, and then the prequel of how they met.
Yay you're doing it this year!! :)
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