Worship me, for I… I… AH-CHOO!
Indeed. I finished NaNoWriMo, although I in no way completed the novel. I’ve got a lot of work cut out for me - I over-described some scenes, did a lot of skipping around, and my last 500 or so words are a quick summary of everything I still need to do. I estimate that it’ll need another month of writing and a couple of months of fiddling to get to the point where I want anyone to look at it.
But that won’t be a problem (she vowed) - the best thing about NaNoWriMo is that it temporarily puts me back into the habit of writing every day. When I was in high school, I used to do just that - I’d write at least two or three (handwritten) pages a day. Most of it was crap, but it kept me entertained, it kept the friends who read it entertained, and that’s all I cared about. I wrote for fun, nearly every day, except when I was sick or had an otherwise valid excuse. I even wrote when I’d spend a night with a friend, because I carried my big three-ring binder o’ story with me. My friends were also amateur writers, so it wasn’t a big deal to say, “Okay, movie-watching time is over. Time to break out our stories.”
And NaNoWriMo is kind of like that, for me. Except instead of having one friend writing with me, I have thousands, and we’re all saying, “Okay, movie-watching/dog-washing/cat-feeding/whatever-whatevering is over. Time to break out our stories.” And after the month is over, we heave a collective sigh of relief (or angst, as the case may be) and go back to the whatever-whatevering.
I’ve decided I need to keep my groove. I find it every year, whether I win this thing or not, and then I lose it in December. This year, I want to keep going - not the crazy word count rush, but the habit itself. I want to write every day for at least half an hour. I want to hoist the Jolly Roger and plunder my brain for treasure every single day. It’s not realistic, of course - weekends, holidays, and sick days of one sort or another will hinder me, but NaNoWriMo proves that these things aren’t insurmountable obstacles.
Of course, I’m still going to take a few days off before I start this crazy plan, because ye gads, I need the rest. My brain has taken all the plundering it can and needs to go into drydock for the rest of the week. Though given my piratey metaphors, I think I know what I’ll be writing about on Monday. Arr.
One thing I have to mention about my final wrap-up on my NaNo novel, for when I go back to it later, is that I realized I forgot to mention my main character’s obsession with robots. Given that it’s going to be important later on in subsequent stories - possibly next year’s NaNo novel - I guess I’ll have to make sure to put it in somewhere.
This year’s NaNo fed off last year’s, though it had a new main character and many of the main characters of last year’s are supporting characters in this one - last year’s story was futuristic crime fiction, this year’s was a cyberpunk detective story, where the main character was trying to find last year’s guy. The next one I’ll write in the cycle (might be for NaNo, might be just for grins) feels like it’s going to be a superhero-ish story where the new main character is going to have to do something about this year’s main character, who kind of cracks and starts going over to the dark side at the end of this year’s novel. Well, to the darker side, anyway… he was already a hacker and a generally unpleasant person to begin with.
And now, after all that rambling and gushing, I want to note that it is 3:30 in the morning - but for a change, I didn’t stay up all night. I wrote this *after* I woke up. Dear darling little GussyHead decided that my face was a chew toy and woke me at 2 this morning. At which time I started sneezing and had to bail out on the sleep idea.
Looks like a nap will be in order later today. At least I don’t have to feel guilty about it now that I don’t need to write a couple thousand words before I can snooze. :P
