I admit it. I gave up. Not intentionally. I didn’t say “I can’t do this. I’m done.” Instead, November 30 caught up to me and I was still 45,000 words from the goal. NaNoWriMo Fail. I did learn a few things in my attempt to write a novel in 30 days: I cannot write a story on the fly. I need and should create an outline beforehand. I have a tendency to give my characters one-syllable names, like Kate or Wynn. I write carefully and concisely, almost too much so. It can be a painful process. I think clearly in the morning but think creatively at night. I can and will write a novel (or more), just not in 30 days. Maybe next year, I’ll give this a try: Was NaNoWriMo a win or fail for you? … [Read more...]

It’s day 8 of NaNoWriMo and I’m still at 3,015 words. My average daily word count is shrinking by the, er, day. I’ve been following other WriMos on Twitter and watching their word counts exceed 10,000. Even my NaNoWriMo writing buddies have written more words than me. They are leaving me in their word count dust! I knew at the beginning I probably wouldn’t write 50,000 words. My goal instead was to write every day. Yeah, that hasn’t happened. Blame wanting to sleep in, the time change, a cold, whatever. Its not happening. But I’m not discouraged. I know that I can crank out 1,000 words an hour if I really put fingertips to keyboard. I know that I can find an hour each day to write. I know that if I made the effort NaNoWriMo could be mine! Alas, I don’t think it will be. I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I’m just being realistic. That’s just who I am. I also know that I’m a very careful, concise writer. It goes against my nature to spew words onto the screen. I love writing but … [Read more...]

When the clock struck midnight around the world, National Novel Writing Month kicked-off with a bang. When the clock struck midnight on the east coast, I was fast asleep. I opted to start NaNoWriMo a little later this morning. I spent an hour writing and penned 937 words – not a good pace for the 50K goal but not bad. In fact, I’m not trying to reach 50,000 words. My personal goal is just to get into the habit of writing daily. If I can write 1000 words a day, I’ll have 30, 000 written by November 30, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I can then write another 30,000 in December. So maybe I won’t win NaNoWriMo but I can achieve my goal to write a complete novel this year. And that’s good enough for now. Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? How’d the first day go? … [Read more...]

Well, I did it! I signed up for NaNoWriMo. What’s that you ask? It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Its a contest that takes place every November. Writers pledge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Not an easy task. That’s 1600+ words a day, which I figure is about 5 pages. And, if I’m lucky, I’ll probably only have one hour a day in which to crank out those five pages. Yeah, I’m a little crazy. Actually, I’m really excited about this task, despite the daunting nature of it. I've wanted to be a novelist since the third grade. At some point you just have to take the bull by the horns and go for it (sorry for the cliché) and that’s the whole point of NaNoWriMo, to write and write and write and edit later. It really is about cranking out 50K words in 30 days, to hell with the quality. When I was teaching composition to college freshman, I advised them to just write. To just get their draft on paper and worry about making it pretty later. So that’s what I’m going to do this … [Read more...]