Monday 2 November 2009

NaNoWriMo has begun!

Which will come as no surprise to most. I have started to. I wrote 3747 words yesterday. Less than I had hoped for (which was 5000 words), but more than I needed to write (min. 1667 words).

What I do know is this, and it is as I suspected, I have no sense of urgency at all in my writing. I was afraid that this would happen. Thirty days seems like such a long time and I know I can write 50000 words in ten days.

The upshot is that I feel like I don't have to write. I have no motivation to write. I have to force myself to sit down and write. And that worries me. I am afraid that at some point soon, I'm just not going to do it and I'll leave it until the last few days as usual and write very badly as usual.

One difference I have this year that I didn't have last year is a detailed outline of the story. This might help me write better at least, so that I might end up with a coherent story at the end of November, which is more than I have achieved before. It will need serious editing and I do mean serious, but maybe having the story there will be enough.

Perhaps what I need to do is set myself one or two week deadlines. So I have to write 25000 words in one week or I need to edit a chapter a week. Something like that. Maybe that will work for me.

Well I just hope that I can complete NaNoWriMo and end up with something usable. Here's to the next 5000 words.

1 comment:

  1. Do you care enough about your story or your characters that you feel like you have to write? It sounds almost like you're just going through the motions. Maybe when it gets going the story will take an unexpected turn off your outline (let it!) and you'll be anxious each day to get back to writing so you can find out what will happen next!

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