
So, NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month is almost here. 50K words in 30 days. I did this 2 years ago when I was unemployed and not in school. Easy to win that way! Last year was a bust. I couldn’t even begin. I was VERY employed and IN grad school. No way in heckle. For sure.
This year, I am employed, my school involves my teaching, but I’m not taking classes. I think I can strike a balance I hope. However, I am bending the NaNo rules to my will. Here’s my official blurb on my NaNo profile:
Right now, the plan is to make NaNo work for me and my current writerly goals. Cranking out a whole novel doesn’t really make sense to me. So the plan is to take the month to develop some short story ideas and build my repertoire. I may find I also have a solo performance piece or other creative non-fiction in there as well.
While some ideas are a sentence or two, others have a few hundred words of free writing behind them, which could ultimately end up in the word count. If that’s technically “cheating” I guess I’d say that while others are writing and not thinking TOO hard, I’ll be slowing down here and there to edit and shape. So we cool? Between now and then, a few more ideas will probably pop into my head with little to no development whatsoever.
I picked “Literary Fiction” again cos that can mean anything, really. Right? It’ll be a bit of a mish-mash. The current “title story” [Devil Jello] will probably be some sort of twisted Lake Woebegone-esque tale. Others will be…different. We shall see….
All right, onward.
If you’re NaNo-ing this year, I’d love for you to add me to your writing buddy list. Visit my profile HERE.
Since writing that blurb a month ago, indeed a few more story ideas have popped into my head. We’ll see how many I get to, and what would be really cool is that some of them will even have endings! Woot! I’ve already gone to a few gatherings with my local region–I’m a member of the Notre Dame region, which includes peeps from all over “Michiana.” A cool possee. I hope to make it to at least a few more as we get in full gear.
So, wish me luck and I extend the same to you in all your creative endeavors in the final stretches of 2008.
