I’ve completed four days of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I do believe it was a good decision, joining NaNoWriMo. The days and the writing have been scary, like pulling hens teeth, slow, and exhausting. But no matter how much I think I’m not going to do it or how much I want to stop after I actually start the day’s writing, I meet my goal of a chapter a day and I meet the NaNoWriMo word count goal too. Whoo hoo!
The path to success — well, success to this point — started with an outline and doing all the background work as per my editor’s instructions. Before I’m even ready to write for the day, I go through my notes to refresh my memory, I place that chapter’s calendar with the outline on it next to me and study it. I find that all helps me get into book mode. But without NaNoWriMo, I probably still wouldn’t have started writing. And without seeing the word count of my writing buddies on NaNoWriMo, I probably wouldn’t keep going. Some of my buddies are way ahead of me, a few behind. Either way though, it eggs me on.
The other amazing part of NaNoWriMo is the daily pep talk. Under Breaking News, the Founder Chis Baty writes something humorous but serious, in a way that gets you planting butt in chair, fingers on keyboard: writing. Today, I, along with the tens of thousands of Wrimos, received a pep talk from an author. I read somewhere not to read it until you’re ready to write. So I’m taking that advice. When it gets time for today’s writing session, the first thing I’ll do, after I read some #nanowrimo tweets that is, another way to pump one up, is read that pep talk. Right after that, I’ll start writing.
It’s early days yet. From my experience with the PAD (Poem-A-Day) challenge back in April, it’s going to be the last week that’ll be the toughest for me. Until then, I’m having fun!
