Wednesday 15 June 2011

Me? A writer?

I wish!

One of my Bucket List items is to write a novel.

And here is my opportunity!

November is: National Novel Writing Month

We have exactly 1 month (starting on 1 November) to write a 50 000 (yes, that is Fifty Thousand) word novel.*
Which means you write on the fly - no thinking, no editting (there really isn't time for perfection - which is why this is just up my alley)

It sounds like fun & a great challenge & this is the advice we were given upon sign up:

1) It's okay to not know what you're doing. Really. You've read a lot of novels, so you're completely up to the challenge of writing one. If you feel more comfortable outlining your story ahead of time, do it! But it's also fine to just wing it. Write every day, and a book-worthy story will appear, even if you're not sure what that story might be right now.
2) Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December and beyond. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.
3) Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.
3.5) There will be times you'll want to quit during November. This is okay. Everyone who wins NaNoWriMo wanted to quit at some point in November. Stick it out. See it through. Week Two can be hard. Week Three is much better. Week Four will make you want to yodel. And we're talking the good kind of yodeling here.
I am sure many of you have always wanted to write a novel, so don't leave me to do this on my own!

Asked to describe our outside interests - I wrote:

Drinking coffee through Tim Tams, Dancing like a madwoman in the shower, talking to my cats, sending positive "Marry Me" vibes to Damon from Vampire Diaries &  perving over Zac Efron

Sign up HERE
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*I only come back from Thailand 9 days into the challenge - Oh boy - I am gonna have to graft!

2 Comments:

  1. One month? 50000 words?? Wow! I can't wait to hear more about it :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow! would love to see/read what you write. i started to write a children's book in 2008. well, i'm still on page 6! LOL

    ReplyDelete

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