NaNoWriMo season begins again today at 3 p.m. Pacific Time. Whether a grizzled veteran or a writing wannabee I recommend this dazzling adventure. I first did it four years ago and it changed my life. I mean, heck, just look where I am now, an umemployed ex-geek drifting aimlessly across the country with little to show for it except an abused liver. This could be you!
All seriousness aside, If you have ever thought you would like to write a novel one day, this is your chance. Surely you can rearrange your life for one little month. After 30 days of toil you’ll have a really crappy first draft, an amazing sense of accomplishment, and a bunch of new friends who are just as crazy as you are.
Dammit! Some weird parse error is preventing me from signing up….I…want to have many ……..dot-dot-dots…in my novel!!!…..
I got it right now…I’m in…between reading your shit and writing my own…that’ll be the day I go back to Annondale….
‘I’m never going back to my old school’
…Steely Dan
I want to so very badly. There are a couple of things that stop me. 1) I am supposed to be getting my life and long term care license this quarter. That means study time, 2) I’m terrified about having to leave grammar and punctuation and let the story take its own life. 3) I have a ton of story starters in my head.
Fabulous opening paragraphs that lead to dead space.
I’m great at reading for the best parts. Some things you read for the story, some for the writing. Seldom and treasured are those that bring both together.
1) In the words of Warren Zevon, may he rest in peace: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
2) Piffle. You can punctuate and still be prodigious.
3) Pick one. It’s only dead space if you don’t write.
OK, here’s what I tell my own students when they’re too terrified to start writing:
At first, you want to get the ideas out of your head and onto the paper. DO NOT worry about whether you have spelling and grammar and punctuation right — if you worry about those, you’re thinking too much, and if you’re thinking too much, you’re censoring yourself. If you’re censoring yourself, you’re throwing away ideas that might just turn out to be worthwhile in the long run.
Freewriting is like taking your brain to the top of a hill and letting off the parking brake and seeing where it goes. It’s SUPPOSED to be messy. If it isn’t messy, you’re not doing it right. You’re thinking too much.
So, Melinda, stop thinking and start writing.
And, oh, yes, Melinda, even if you have a whole lot of other stuff you gotta do, you only have to come up with 1667 words a day to do NaNoWriMo, just a few pages’ worth. I come up with that much just daydreaming.
OK, I done did it. I got me signed up for NaNoWriMo. Fer a warmup, you-all oughta contribute to the desert story.
NaNoWriMo update — I’m working on my cast of characters, and boy, are they great. You all ought to think up people you want to spend a mnth with.
Carol Anne, Carol Anne, I registered. Now I just have to make some sense of the nonsense that is in my head. I promise to take your words and Jerry’s to heart and write without too much reflection on grammar.
Bravo, Melinda! I just sent a description of NaNoWriMo to my supervisor, asking her permission to send an invite to all of faculty of the community college where I work.
I ordered the T-shirt Tuesday — the one that says, “So Many Words, So Little Time.”
There’s a deeper meaning to that slogan — my grandmother the heavy-duty mystery fan died doing what she liked best: reading a mystery novel. The gardener discovered it open on her lap when he came into the house to see why she hadn’t come out to greet him the way she usually did when he arrived. The novel’s title: So Little Time.