Tuesday, November 1, 2011

And The Race Is On...

It's the first day of NaNoWriMo, so naturally I'm doing a blog post.  This post comes courtesy of BA Matthews, who so very kindly challenged me to write a blog post everyday this month.  Everyday.  While I'm trying to hit my 200k goal.  Yep.  You're right, I probably am crazy.  The problem is, I find it so very hard to not accept those writing challenges.  So here we go.

Day 1:

I am currently sitting at 7981/200,000 words.  This means I've hit my target for the day, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to stop.  (I'm not sure I know what the meaning of the word 'stop' actually is)  Instead I'm going to continue utilizing the amazing wordmongering hashtag on twitter and get the word count up to at least 10k.

For those of you that are looking at this, shaking your head and thinking 'I could never do that', let me tell you something.  Every writer is different.  Not just in what genre they write, or their particular brand of word choice, or even in how they choose to break up their novel.  Every writer also writes at different speeds.

To get to my speed, I actually turn off every other mental process (aside from those keeping me alive, of course) and just let the words flow.  Although I hit the backspace button more than I probably should (damn typos...I just can't leave them alone!) I don't rethink any sentence...unless I don't know where I was trying to go with it.  Then I might start it over again.

Some people, of course, can't quite get their inner editor to shut up.  I know people who will agonize over every word in a sentence, and end with much lower word counts than mine.  Does that mean that I'm the better writer?  Definitely not!  More than likely it's my work that's going to need to undergo heavy surgery when all is said and done just to make it passable, and their novel that is much more presentable, even as a first draft.

Sometimes I almost wish I was like those people, because then, maybe, I wouldn't have to spend so long editing.  I hate editing with a passion, and anything I can do to avoid it is good for me.  But I don't write like that.

In the end, just like singers, writers have to be true to themselves too.  Yes, we can adapt and change our writing styles, taking into account other writing styles that we may have seen, or learned about, but in the end, we can't be anyone other than who we are.  If that means we write slower because we hate putting a terrible sentence on the page than so be it!  If that means that we can't even hear the music blaring in our ears because we're so shut down while we're writing, so be it!

Be you, and your story will turn out exactly the way you want it.  Good luck!  I can't wait to see the wrimos start to cross that finish line!  Nano the 13th is going to be Epic!

5 comments:

  1. And since I asked for you to actually post your blog, now I am following it!

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  2. What, no link? LOL.

    What can I say, I love sending out writing challenges! I'm one of those people who agonizes over many of my words, but I would argue against my rough drafts being any less in need of heavy editing. I must spend 10 hours on every chapter I edit, more on those that require full re-writes.

    I can't wait to see more of your posts during the rest of the month!

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  3. I'm terrible at linking. Especially when writing blog posts between wordmongering sessions...

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  4. 200K? Looking at your yesterday's wordcount, I suspected you were aiming for half a million or more!

    You're so very right about the Inner Editor (yes, mine insists capitalization - thinks he is some kind of God or what?)! While I'm finding him more controllable during speed-writing, he sure manages to get some input during that micro-millisecond between the time when words form inside my brain and are then typed out at the keyboard.

    -Urja Baggins from NaNo

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