NaNoWriMo

LOL, that cartoon kinda says it all. For the life of me, I couldn't get myself to just friggin' write! I'd sit at my computer with my ideas and good intentions laid out before me, but I'd get so caught up in trying to make in perfect, that I'd lose the story and ultimately my inspiration.

This month, I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. It was a split-second decision, made about four hours before the thing was supposed to begin, and honestly, I was scared to death. How in the heck was I going to write 50,000 comprehendible words in thirty days? But then I remembered last year, when I'd heard about for the first time, and how, once I saw what everyone was doing and checked out the website for myself that I just had to participate in 2012. I clicked the "sign me up" button before I really chickened out, pushing myself to quit being such a weenie.

It's day five, and you know what? I think it's the best decision I've ever made when it comes to my writing. I perused a few of the "get started" articles, and most of them said just write. Don't worry about editing until December. Take your inner-editer, lock her in a sound-proof cage, and throw away the key ~ for now. I've heard this concept before, but it never seemed to work for me. Try as I might, I'd always get caught up in needing my novel to be perfect the first time around.

Turns out, that goal is simply impossible and I was setting myself up for failure every time I sat in front of my computer to write.

One thing that's a huge help is closing my eyes. If you can type without looking at the keyboard, I highly recommend it. Close your eyes, and just type. You can't see the screen; all you can see is the story in your head, and it just, surprisingly, comes pouring out of you.

And whattaya know, sometimes a little unexpected twist occurs. The character takes on a life of his own, says what's on his mind, and completely becomes out of your control. Sounds strange, I guess. He's a fictional character that I created. But as I've gotten to know him over the past four days, he's starting to feel comfortable with telling me how he'd react or what he'd say. It's crazy, and I find that I can't stop writing.

This has never happened to me before. Not getting stuck or completely frustrated with myself. Just write is a tool that truly works if you can find a way to boot your inner-editing out the door. I like the way one of the articles put it: "We're just making all this stuff up...Take your novel seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously." ~ something along those lines, but it's fantastic stuff.

With that in mind, I found that I might be able to go back over my few days of work to just get a better handle on where the story is going. I kept thinking don't take yourself too seriously, trying to maintain my focus on the just write philosophy. And it worked. If I saw something that didn't sound just how I wanted it to, but I couldn't come up with something on the spot, my exact thoughts were, "Fix it in December."


I just plowed through the words, made a few changes to smooth out the flow of the story line, and guess what? I came up with a couple pages full of ideas to work with.

Meaning, I have a crazy amount of writing to do.

What was it Nora Roberts once said? "You can fix crap, but you can't fix an empty page." I've gotten more done in regards to my novel in the past four days than I've ever done in the years that I've said I was going to do this. By just writing.



Happy Reading (and Writing) Everyone :)


~ Keely ~