I guess I should really go and bloody write something rather than waffling in a blog post. Surely a blog post is not superior to the march of adventure that is NaNoWriMo? Because, it is an adventure. Not only that but it is a challenge. One that I think every writer should attempt. I have spoken to people who do not think that just hammering out a first draft is the way forward. To them I say, at least I am moving forward. That is, after I have throttled the editor in my and shoved him in a box.
I think learning to quiet the editor is a good skill. Perhaps even a very important one. Even if you take nothing other than that from NaNoWriMo I think it has been worth the time. Just do it for one year, do not bother with the rest. I promise you will learn something.
This is my third year taking part. I am of the opinion that a writer can have never learned enough. And so year after year I put myself through the ordeal that NaNoWriMo becomes. I will probably just scrape by like I have the previous two years. I will probably finish the novel over the months after NaNo, just like the last two years, and then I will print out a triumphant first draft, put it on my side and never visit it again.
Because editing is the bloody hard part.
In a way I suppose the march stops there for me. I am probably doomed to fill drawer after drawer with horrendous first drafts. Even as I type this my mind is straying to the first draft I wrote last year and I'm thinking, perhaps I should do a rewrite for NaNo, perhaps I should scrap what I have written so far this year. Perhaps. Perhaps, I should write the second novel in the series I started last year.
Now I am feeling conflicted and will have to go away and think about this some more.
This totally speaks to all of my own feelings about Nanowrimo. I am also taking part this year, and I am also more than 5,000 words behind. I also happen to have three college papers due this week, which makes guilt free noveling pretty difficult. I definitely think that Nanowrimo is a worthy endeavor, but I kind of wish that they would make the 50,000 word goal a little more flexible. Instead of relegating it to winners and losers, why not let people set their own word goals for the month of November, and if people want to shoot for 50,000, more power to them. This year I'm writing a series of short stories instead of novel, and I feel like it's taken a lot of the pressure off. My problem has always been completion, so if I can actually FINISH several short stories by the end of the month, regardless of word count, I will be happy. It's nice to hear the echo of my own thoughts regarding Nanowrimo, and I've been enjoying your blog otherwise, as well!
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