NaNo Write-In!

Today I joined a fellow Wrimo and we nano'ed away for a couple of hours ... broke for lunch - delicious homemade soup and fresh bread - then nano'ed some more ... it was FUN!! We got some good writing done but it was far too short.

Next year in November, I think we need an SA NaNo Weekend!!! :-))

And word count update: 43,734 with 5 days to go ...
Elle

NaNo Buddies and NaNo Winners.

One of the coolest things about the NaNoWriMo experience is that for one month - a full thirty days - you become a member of a very exclusive group of people. People who are, in one important aspect of life, Just Like You.

Writers. Wordfreaks and geeks. Storytellers, storylovers. People who understand when you say things that would make non-writers think you're ready for the nuthouse--or at the very least, overdue for a long vacation. Things like:

Yesterday I discovered that when Robert was six, he liked pulling the wings off butterflies.

or

Julia told me she just hates bread-and-butter pudding

or

Robert is simply refusing to fall in love with Julia. He wants to go hang out with Jane, and I don't even know yet who Jane is, except that she's a fat grade school teacher. What is he seeing in her that I don't know about yet?


This all sounds perfectly normal except for the minor detail that none of these people exist anywhere except within the confines of your mind. Then it becomes downright scary (to outsiders) and fascinatingly familiar (to insiders). And when you're doing NaNo, you have about 80 000 plus insiders ready, willing and able to share your fictional joys, sorrows and frustrations. And best of all, you don't have to explain yourself - they just know exactly what you mean when you moan about unco-operative main characters and annoyingly intrusive minor characters.

But the really, really BEST thing about NaNo is your personal group of Writing Buddies. The people you are most closely linked to and whose word counts you follow the way racing fans follow racing results. And today, I am proud to be able to share in the joy of my NaNo buddies who have reached the goal post - they have completed 50 000 words in LESS than a month.

Shirl hit 50K on Sunday morning (SA time) and Kelly also hit 50K on Sunday morning (EST time). Congrats and huge applause to both of them. :)) My other buddies are all hanging in there, astounding me with the awesomeness of their commitment despite things like houses full of guests, chemotherapy, broken hearts, and prolonged battles with the infernal internal editor!

Way to go, all my wrimos!

And my word count? 30,366 as of Sunday morning. I'm exactly on target - in fact, I'm about 360 words to the good!! :-)

NaNoWriMo 2007 Update

Two years ago (2005) on the third day of Nano, I posted that I was an Official NaNo Dropout. Last year (2006) I was in a black hole and didn't even register for it. Duh me! Today is day fifteen on NaNoWriMo 2007 and my word count is:

23, 327 words and counting ....

Woo hoo!! In two weeks!!! Unbelievable. I'm ecstatic. I'm enjoying it SO much this year, which is why I'm not blogging too much here or on my other blog. But I'll be back, sooner or later.

Til later!

Just a Quick Note!

Today is the eighth day of NaNoWriMo and praise be, I'm still in the running!

It's been both harder and easier than I imagined. Yesterday I wrote to a dear friend, who has been my stay and support through all my writing ups and downs over the last few years. Here's what I said to her (somewhat edited for brevity's sake!)

NaNo update: well, its quite amazing. Doing this has really changed something for me - not that I'm suddenly producing deathless prose at the drop of a hat, of course. But I can say this: (although with much trepidation, seeing as its only the sixth day of NaNo and I'm still writing in fits and starts, feeling my way forward very, very cautiously - and I'm behind the schedule - BUT at least I'm writing, which is more than has happened in a long while.)

As you know, whenever I've tried to start a new writing project in recent months, my first step has always been to create a story outline, then to try and make character sketches and only then to start writing, once I feel fully organized and in control. I spent ages on plotting, story-telling, character design, making notes and coming up with plot ideas etc. Well, you know exactly how far that has got me, lol!

On Sunday evening, I realized that at this point in NaNo, I didn't want to - in fact, I couldn't - do that anymore. In the actual NaNo writing, I've started letting the characters do the talking and acting and reacting and thinking ... so it felt like to now go and impose any kind of structure beyond the existing outline would actually arrest that process.

And I started remembering that THIS is what it felt like back in the day - back in the days of (Unpublished Novel No. One), and (Unpublished Novel No. Two). It was free-flowing, unstructured, coming from someplace I had no conscious control over, even though I still agonized over which words to use. I'd completely and utterly lost touch with that creative flow and NaNo has now become a process of finding that again. I have no idea if the voice I'm using is any good, or if it sounds stilted or true or artificial, or anything - but for better or worse, its me. My writing voice.

It's a wonderful and quite scary feeling... as in - will I be able to keep it up? When will I know if its any good? Aargh - all the usual writerly panicky things! ;-)

If anyone's interested in my progress, the link to my NaNo profile, which includes a regular update on my word count (right now it's 8998) plus links to my awesome NaNo writing buddies and occasional excerpts from the Opus itself, is HERE.