Is it November already? Good grief, Charlie Brown! Time continues to prove to us that she stops for no one, and so we’ve found ourselves on the eve before November 1st – this all hallows eve – and we will dress up and be ‘someone/thing else’ before we settle into our novels and write someone/thing else into life!
My NaNoWriMo goal this year is to finish writing my novel. It may not take me the whole month. It may not take me 50,000 words, but whatever it takes, I have to GET.IT.DONE.
I’m feeling a bit of anxiety because my ‘actual time to write’ reality is balls crazy. I have to get up early in the morning to write. It’s the only way. And that makes me feel like puking. I’ve been balls-bad at saying ‘no’ to literary goings-on during the day, and so I leave myself no choice but to get up early and write. Yikes. It.Must.Be.Done.
See…there’s another motivating factor.
We’re getting a puppy!
Yeah…I put that in tiny writing because I can barely believe it myself. But the kids have been begging…and I think we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. And we can bring the puppy home in early December which means I HAVE TO get my novel done before that because when puppy comes home – I’ll be a new mom! And I don’t want to have to raise a puppy and a novel plot! You feel me?
What the heck is NaNoWriMo, you may ask? It’s National Novel Writing Month – wherein you register at www.nanowrimo.org and attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. It’s invigorating, exhausting, challenging, frustrating…and may sound like a little piece of hell or heaven to you depending on your writing style/process…but for some of us, it’s just what we need to get our arses in the chair and write.
Have I done this before? Indeed. Twice. The first time I finished – and wrote 50,000 words in one month. Gah! The second time, I did not finish and wrote about 12,000. They say the third time’s a charm…or something.
If you’re doing this too, check out the Buddy System, and see who is doing it in your city. There may be writing get-togethers and fun things of the sort you can participate in. I know that Windsor has a group meeting over the month…
I’ll keep you posted on my word counts.
HAPPY WRITING!
VANESSA SHIELDS, writer 