NaNoWriMo
Update
So it's day three and my brain decided it was time to write - who was I to refuse?
Day Three
I gave up sleep today. For the first time in a long time.
I gave up sleep today. For the first time in a long time.
And if you knew me, you would know how important my sleep is.
At five, the plotbunnies came a'knocking. I refused.
At five thirty, they were insistent. Still I refused to budge.
By six, they were all but pounding my skull in until I got up to make the pain go away (oh Myprodol, you light up my life), but by six thirty the plotbunnies - though weakened, continued to whine.
And begrudingly I turned on my laptop, opened word and stared.
I had no idea what they wanted me to do: I was finally where they wanted me and they said...nothing? Annoyed, I typed a few things down, just to get me started, at first they were random words and then...
The hopeful wish that someone on the NaNoWriMo group could help me with an idea to move the story along was practically pointless, the plotbunnies hurled through the door like a freight train and the words came: gradually at first until time had passed and suddenly...
5000words grinned at me from the bottom of the Word document.
Could it be?
Roughly two hours had passed. Not the fastest I'd ever typed, but I had edited here and there (shhh, the NaNoWriMo gods need never know...) and there I was, the first checkpoint in the 50K word challenge.
I still had a long way to go, but I had reached a milestone in two days, with one day behind.
At this current state, I'm not sure how much I've repeated and whether everything I wrote made sense as a whole, but the word count had gone up and that was the challenge.
As many have pointed out: NaNoWriMo is not a competition to write the next bestseller in thirty days (though damn, what an accomplishment that would be!), but a challenge to write every day. Why though? Why is that important?
On day three of NaNoWriMo, I found out: Writing is an art form that requires an unending amount of discipline.
You can have talent in spades, be coveted as the next J.K Rowling, G. R. R. Martin, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare! But that talent is useless without discipline - without practice - without making mistakes and learning.
If those great writers only wrote when they felt like it, they probably wouldn't have created such amazing pieces of work that have stayed with fans for years.
And you know what would've happened if everyone had to do that? Short answer would be that there would definitely be less books in the world.
The thing is, the writing time for a draft stretches years upon years because we, as writers, get attached to this phrase, this character, this scene, this relationship and editing becomes more painful then it already is.
But we hold on, we procrastinate longer then we should and before we know it, we've wasted so much time and then forgotten why we started. Time passes and then we find ourselves reading an unfinished draft that could've been the next big thing in whatever way you wanted it to be.
Why?
Because we're afraid.
Yet another thing I've learnt from NaNoWriMo is that there's no space and no time for that.
People who've accepted the 50K challenge have dared to reach that goal, as unattainable and difficult as it may be when you're sitting in front of a blank screen with a blinking cursor. They have dared to write, regardless of what it is, to give their ideas words and let other people know what it is that's been picking at their brains.
And I think that's the most amazing thing about NaNoWriMo.
5000words grinned at me from the bottom of the Word document.
Could it be?
Roughly two hours had passed. Not the fastest I'd ever typed, but I had edited here and there (shhh, the NaNoWriMo gods need never know...) and there I was, the first checkpoint in the 50K word challenge.
I still had a long way to go, but I had reached a milestone in two days, with one day behind.
At this current state, I'm not sure how much I've repeated and whether everything I wrote made sense as a whole, but the word count had gone up and that was the challenge.
As many have pointed out: NaNoWriMo is not a competition to write the next bestseller in thirty days (though damn, what an accomplishment that would be!), but a challenge to write every day. Why though? Why is that important?
On day three of NaNoWriMo, I found out: Writing is an art form that requires an unending amount of discipline.
You can have talent in spades, be coveted as the next J.K Rowling, G. R. R. Martin, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare! But that talent is useless without discipline - without practice - without making mistakes and learning.
If those great writers only wrote when they felt like it, they probably wouldn't have created such amazing pieces of work that have stayed with fans for years.
As an author once said, "If a draft takes more than three months to write, trash it and start over."
And you know what would've happened if everyone had to do that? Short answer would be that there would definitely be less books in the world.
The thing is, the writing time for a draft stretches years upon years because we, as writers, get attached to this phrase, this character, this scene, this relationship and editing becomes more painful then it already is.
But we hold on, we procrastinate longer then we should and before we know it, we've wasted so much time and then forgotten why we started. Time passes and then we find ourselves reading an unfinished draft that could've been the next big thing in whatever way you wanted it to be.
Why?
Because we're afraid.
Yet another thing I've learnt from NaNoWriMo is that there's no space and no time for that.
People who've accepted the 50K challenge have dared to reach that goal, as unattainable and difficult as it may be when you're sitting in front of a blank screen with a blinking cursor. They have dared to write, regardless of what it is, to give their ideas words and let other people know what it is that's been picking at their brains.
And I think that's the most amazing thing about NaNoWriMo.
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| Done by Kat Mallon, taken from the NaNoWriMo Facebook group |
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