I have been meaning to do NaNo for 9 years and just have never given it a try. On Oct 31, in a fit, all of a sudden I decided to do it. Jump in with both feet. I didn’t have a novel ready to work on (I know I need to work on my plot before I am ready to start writing otherwise it will be a disaster) so i decided to try to write 30 shorts in 30 days, or approximate that anyway. And I did great for the first 13 days. I have a book that my child gave me for Father’s day called “Writing Magic,” by Gail Carson Levine. It is aimed at kids, but it has 30 chapters, each with a writing prompt or two, and I thought that I could do one per day.
I have drafted several scenes, fleshed out some old stories that have been floating around in my brain for a long or a not-so-long time, and was even staying on top of my word count for the first 11 days of the month. And then, since I do have a real job, I just stopped writing on the 14th. It’s now been 4-5 days since I’ve written anything. I’ve done a little research (celestial mechanics, relativity calculations… dusting off some 30 year old physics) and some thinking, but no actual words.
I was beating myself up and then I thought, that is dumb. I don’t have to “win” NaNo. Just getting 12 days of writing in is way more than I have normally been doing. So, I am going to relax, and just enjoy what else I can come up with. I have 3 or 4 different stories I am writing scenes for, I have one more story that I thought of how to make it work, and if I get 3-5 completed first drafts of stories in one month, that is awesome. And then I can spend the next few months revising, taking to my writing club, taking to the Online SFF writing workshop, and then submitting them!!!
So, that is my report. so far I am 17,559 words in for the month and that is a good (astonishing, really) number. If I write for 3 more days, I’ll have written more than half the days of the month, and if i get 10k more words, that’s half-way to winning.
I’m going to take that as a win as I still continue my journey.