So, I Didn’t Miss NaNoWriMo After All
For some reason, I imagined NaNoWriMo was in October.
It’s not, so I’m going to attempt to finally finish the first draft of Strangers In The Land, which is the more strictly literary of the projects I’ve got going right now.
This will take some doing, as I’m wrestling right now with how exactly to tell the story in the first place (and with Not Going All Epic Ballet Fanboy, since one of my characters is a dancer).
The novel explores themes of love, betrayal, loss, and forgiveness (which is to say, I guess, the same themes as every novel, ever — sigh) … as well, I guess, as the concept of the ways one can respond to tragedy.
I’m debating whether to post it here as it progresses. Any thoughts?
Quick Update:
After today’s writing and revisions to existing material, I’m starting with a whopping 18,676 words behind me already.
Wow. o.O’
I do think I’ll post my work-in-progress here, but I’m going to give it its own category and page so it doesn’t clutter up the rest of my blog so much.
Posted on 2015/11/03, in NaNoWriMo and tagged It's My Novel And I'll Cry If I Want To?, NaNoWriMo, Not Going All Epic Ballet FanBoy, Writing. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
I don’t know how posting WIPs works for writing, but it’s very helpful and interesting for visual arts! Inktober was a total revelation to me. Whether you post writing-in-progress or not, I hope you have a lot of fun with NaNoWriMo, and I’d love to hear about it!
Thanks!
I think I might find it potentially very helpful.
One of the thing I’ve really lacked in the past few years is a community of fellow writers … I somehow managed to marry someone who neither writes nor reads (though he’s been enjoying my other WIP, which I’m reading to him as I go, and he makes excellent editorial suggestions), and I’ve been trying to figure out how to reboot my participation in the process of writing and workshopping fiction. I feel like this could certainly help, assuming I don’t get bogged down in revising-on-the-fly (sort of the problem I mentioned in my reply to Cabrogal’s comment).
BTW, I really enjoyed your Inktober post, and I’m glad you mentioned it, because I wanted to comment on it last night but was too frustrated with my phone at the time 😀 Now that I’m on a Real Computer, maybe I’ll go do that!
Hey, thanks! 😀 Yeah, having community support and feedback can really really help – as an introvert, I don’t think I realized that until I tried Inktober. Are there any local writing groups you could join?
Yes! I discovered one recently that I think I’m going to look into. I discovered how awesome the whole workshop concept is in high school (I went to an arts magnet where my major was creative writing), and (as another introvert) that was really surprising to me. I find I really miss it now!
Don’t do it unless you want to find excuses for not doing a proper revision and edit on completion of your draft. Unless you’ve got a much better writer’s work ethic than I do.
Hrm. An interesting point and worth keeping in mind.
That said, revision and editing is the easy part for me. I freaking love that stuff and will do it in place of almost anything else, which is a huge part of my problem as a writer. I’m forever going back and revising instead of writing the rest of the story.
So, basically, the idea is to force myself to put words on … um, not-paper … even when I don’t feel the muse really speaking. That way I’ll have something to revise and edit later 😀
I’ve learned that, for me, actually writing (even when I’m not feeling gloriously inspired) works like an IV double-espresso for the Muse in question, so my hope is that an external goal will help me kickstart that process … and potentially encourage me to leave the revision ’til I’ve completed a substantial portion of the draft 🙂
Yeah, truth be told I’m a lot like that too. But that’s why I’ve never completed a novel. The more I write, the more my ideas about it change, the more I keep going back and revising, until eventually I’m only revising, not writing new chapters.
If you want the secret formula that’ll keep you writing all night and make your cardiologist die of a heart attack:
1 large ripe banana, broken into bite-sized pieces and dropped into the blender
1 cup of milk poured over it
1-1.5 heaped tablespoons of freeze dried espresso
2 scoops of ice-cream
Whizz it up, pour it down and forget about sleeping for 12-18 hours.
OMFG, that sounds amazing. And worth the danger to my cardiologist 😀
In short, I’ve never finished a novel yet, either, for exactly the reasons I’ve mentioned above. With Grad School looming, I’m feeling like this is probably a good time to try to get at least one done!
Hmm, along the “not doing a proper revision and edit” lines, I will say that when I did NaNoWriMo last year (my first time), by the end I was so burned out from focusing on my freaking novel that I refused to even open the file since I finished it! Don’t know if my results are typical, as I don’t know too many fellow NaNoWriMo participants to ask (though I guess there is the whole NaNoWriMo forums). I want to clear up that it didn’t sour me from WRITING at all(obviously), it was just the pressure of finishing up one long complete work that made me want to stay away from that particular work. Sucks, because I actually thought my first novel idea was pretty awesome. (Yes, it involved dancers!)
That said, I’m doing it again this year!
Good luck 🙂
Hm, that’s well worth thinking about (though I believe that a “cooling-off” period between banging out a draft and revising it can help, so maybe you’ll come back to it with a fresh eye sooner or later!).
Good luck to you on this year’s project as well! I feel like maybe I should post my draft here, come to think of it, since I’m connected both to ballet peeps and non-ballet peeps on WP and that might help me maintain realism while avoiding the Horrible Jargon Trap (also known as, “Wait, What’s A Fetlock?”).