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Okay, I know last week I said I wasn’t doing NaNoWriMo, but it appears I’m doing it anyway. Since November first, I’ve been able to write at least 1800 words a day, and usually 2K plus. It’s not been hard; I just sit down for an hour and type whatever comes to mind. In some cases, this has been entire scenes, including plot, dialog, characterization, and setting. On other days, I’ve just written about what the theme of the story is, or I’ve done some outlining and back story. As far as I’m concerned, it all counts toward that end goal of 50000 words by November 30th.
I’ve yet to spend more than an hour writing when I do this, which has made me realize a few things.
First, I can type really, really fast. Yesterday I wrote over 2K words in 40 minutes. The keyboard was smoking.
Second, it matters more to me that I get the ideas down than that I get the words perfect. It’s take me a while to reach this point, but I’ve learned that once the basic bones of the story are captured, I can always go back and fix/edit/polish/perfect later. Thus the reason why it’s been painless for me to write 2K words every day.
Third, even though it’s only taking me an hour to get in my NaNoWriMo word count each day, it’s still a significant amount of time out of my day. After a week of doing this, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to trim back a little more in other areas of my life, just so I have a life. I can’t do everything I want to do, and I sure as hell can’t do everything everyone else wants me to do. I posted on Facebook earlier today about how I’m getting tired of other people making demands on my schedule and telling me, “Hey, you work for yourself so your schedule is really flexible.” It’s not, and I’m not putting up with that attitude any more. I bust ass every day to take care of my family and to get my work done. So the rule is, if I am not employed by you, did not marry you, or did not give birth to you, you are not at the top of my priority list. In fact, you are probably at the bottom of the list, competing with a billion other lesser priorities for that last chunk of my free time that I may or may not decide to give away. Deal with it.
Final and fourth lesson – I love to to write, especially when I’ve got an idea in my head that I just can’t shake. I can’t do the short story a week any more, at least not write and podcast at that rate, but I can still write and once I’ve got something written and edited and polished, then I can podcast it. And maybe publish it too. And that’s a schedule and a goal I can live with.
For those of you doing NaNoWriMo, keep on rocking. For those of you not doing NaNoWriMo, thank you for your understanding and support. And for those rare few of you who decide you’d rather be assholes and not support, go suck it.
