NaNoWriMo & Me

Add to those list of names I have earned in my life Mr. Biting-Off-More-Than-He-Can-Chew. After years of threatening to participate (mostly threatening myself) I jumped in at the last minute and decided, for whatever reason, this was the year to attempt the most awesome, the most asinine of goals.

I am participating in the National Novel Writing Month challenge. By December 1st I hope to have crossed the line with over 50,000 words dedicated to a single story. I have officially lost whatever common sense I have gathered these many years.

As the exercise values quantity over quality I elected not to pursue one of my young adult stories and instead grabbed an old seed I had been meaning to plant for a quirky character driven screenplay. The youngest characters are nearing 30 years old and two prominent characters are in their late 50's. Part of my reason for choosing this particular story has to do with the possibility of failure; if it falls apart or reads like crap I'd rather it was something I didn't hold so dear.

So far I managed to get down the first two chapters, over 3400 words, which is double what my daily average needs to be to make it. Yeah, I like to sprint strong and fade midway. Pacing was always difficult when I ran cross country as well. Also, it reads like crap. I'm having problems finding the narrative voice and the draft, in accordance with the idea of "just getting it down" on paper is coming out in what I call a vomit draft. I'm just spewing, I'll clean it all up later if I feel it warrants cleaning. It's an exercise, I'm exercising. I have to keep reminding myself.

I suppose it's no surprise that the NaNoWriMo website is timing out as all 70,000 of us are trying to get our first day's work up on the site. I'd just like to confirm that my word count and first chapter were posted, but it looks like I'll have to set my alarm for 3 AM and hope no one else is doing the same.

This will be the last I mention it here. I know many NaNoWriMo participants who keep blog diaries of their work-in-progress, many creating entirely new blogs for the purpose. Not me. Unless I drop out before the end I'll check back in a month with my progress.

In the meantime, back to more kidlit reviews.