I just finished my first day of writing for the first day of National Novel Writing Month. My current word total is 2064, which is better than the recommended 1667 words a day. (The goal is 50,000 words by the end of 30 November.) So, I’m slightly ahead ahead of the game for a change. The trick, at least for me, is never to fall behind. I’ll maintain the daily quota, and I will exceed it as often as I can, but I will never fall behind (because it’s all over if that happens, unless I manage a substantial lead at some point).
The goal of this crazy project is quantity, so naturally I am not striving to create a masterpiece. My personal goal is to write a novel this month, good or bad, so I can overcome the fiction-writing drought I have been weathering lo these too many years. True, I have been writing steadily for years now, but it has all been nonfiction, and as my oldest friends well know, fiction and poetry are my raisons d’être. Yes, I am participating for the purpose of self-resurrection. I need to overcome inertia and build momentum — this novel in November is my strategy for accomplishing it.
My NaNoWriMo nickname, for anyone who is curious, is Thundercloud.
Tags: writing