what the hell am I thinking?
If I am a writer at all, I am a writer of flash. And not just flash as often defined by a thousand word count. Shorter. Much shorter. When I looked for stuff to submit to that contest a month ago, the only pieces I had of which I was somewhat proud were under four hundred words. One of them was barely over 200. And I'm going to attempt to write 50,000 words in a month? Insane. So I'm breaking it down and trying to think how I can make this work.50,000 words means 1,667 words per day. So let's say that my ideal average length of a piece is about 300 words. Actually, to make the math work, let's say 333. That's five pieces a day. Every day. No breaks. Five pieces surrounding the same general cast of characters, situation, plot, etc. Insane.
But I'm going to try. I think there may be just enough diversity to let my mind leap from place to place. Maybe. And I think I'm going to go into it without worrying about whether the pieces I write make sequential sense in the form of a novel. I can move the puzzle pieces around later.
Of course, five pieces a day while dealing with kids, work, etc. is a challenge in and of itself, even without considering the mental gymnastics necessary. But what the hell. Why not?
So how are other NaNo'ers feeling about things right about now?
(The image, incidentally, is relevant to the idea I have in mind.)
Technorati tags: writing, NaNoWriMo
posted by Dave Clapper @ 4:36 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I'm a bit nervous about the approaching nano challenge as well. My biggest question is whether to continue on the novel I began last year or start a completely new one. It feels like a failure to move on from the first project, but then I also feel I should allow myself to follow my current interest, so as to "strike while the iron is hot." Either way, I know I 'll have to change my normal writing/editing process if I'm going to make it to 50,000 words. We'll see . . .
Good luck! If I can do it, you can do it. Just commit that no matter what, you will get down that 1667 words a day and leave them on the page, the only qualification being that they have to be remotely related to your overall topic. Save the editing for the following month!
Go, Dave, Go!
I'm dealing with it by completely denying the fact that it starts in, like, nine days.
No number crunching allowed.
And people who overplan with outlines and character plans and this and that, well, they're just being silly.
You can do it, and you will do it. No question, no problem.
I don't like the notion of NANO because it says to me that writing my novel wasn't a spontaneous endeavor... that I was motivated by something other than the story burning in my head. And the story had been there for too long and I was growing afraid that I would lose it. But when I did write it, it took me a little over 53 days or something, and the latter half was under a week (of madness).
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