It’s very possible that I have lost my mind, but I have made the decision to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.
But what on Earth is it, I hear you ask?
For those of you that are unaware of what I’m talking about NaNoWriMo is a online creative writing challenge. Every year you have to write a novel of 50,000 words in November. A couple of years ago I decided to participate with an interesting little story called ‘The Whitehall Vampire’ which was based around the idea of a puritan detective investigating a series of brutal murders at the court of Charles II .
In fact it was that which started off the whole novel writing process for me. I just loved the idea of plunging into writing a novel and since I always said I was going to write one the time had come to put up or shut up. I never managed to finish my story in the right timescale (in fact I’m still kind of working on it), but I liked the story so much I carried on.
This year I’ve got a couple of really good ideas that I would like to explore and I really want to do this to prove to myself that I can do it and I want to work on something other than ‘Dischord’ . Not that I don’t love my novel (which I’m not ashamed to say I do!) but I suspect a bit of a change might do me some good frankly. ‘Dischord’ has mutated into a bit of a 180,000 word monster which is so NOT what it was originally intended to be.
I’ve got a while before the challenge starts in November so I’ve got time to decide which story to tell and time to do research, if I need to. I also thought if I make the decision to enter for it now then I can’t back out if everyone knows about it,can I?
This is where you guys come in. I’m thinking about getting sponsored possibly, I haven’t decided yet. Any encouragement and comments will be welcome. This is a bit of a step into the unknown and I hope that this year I can achieve my writing goal. It might make me more motivated at work now that I have something I enjoy to work on and look forward to rather than feeling like all I do is go to work, come home and fall into bed in order to do the same thing hours later!
I feel quite stoked about it. After all, I’ve got the equipment I need now I’ve invested in my laptop, I’ve been finding it easier than ever writing the novel using MS Word 2007 and it should be exciting! If I manage to do it , I will feel as if I’ve done something worthwhile for me and that’s what’s important.
The 0-draft of my current novel started life properly as a NaNoWriMo novel in 2007, which did me a lot of good… especially since I had spent most of the year before November working on a completely different project. Right now I’m working on the first full rewrite, and I’m really excited about this book (and hoping that I can finish the rewrites before next November).
Go for it! It makes you want to tear your hair out by the root, but it’s so satisfying seeing that you’ve accomplished something.