do nanowrimo 2006

I made it through another NaNoWriMo relatively unscathed. I’m still checking myself over, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve not been scathed anywhere. If I find any scathe marks (or are they scathe points) I’ll make the appropriate announcement.

But I made it through. I don’t have a piece of work that knocks my socks off, but that isn’t what NaNoWriMo is about. It isn’t about coming up with your freshmen masterpiece or your opus, it’s about setting a daunting goal and reaching it anyways. It’s about bragging rights and it’s about camaraderie with fellow creative and daring souls. Oh, and caffeine. It’s definitely about the caffeine.

So here I am again at the other side of NaNoWriMo with the rough draft of something and the motivation of a parapalegic turtle. Should I edit this to brilliance? Should I hire a team of highly motivated Amazonian monkeys to type randomly on typewriters for a month and merge their results with mine? Would there additions add to or subtract from what I have already? Well, it doesn’t matter because luckily, NaNoWriMo takes place the month before the holidays and so right now, there are more important things to think about than editing novels. Like, for instance, what happened to that extra pan of fudge?

This was a long shot and I missed.

I still don’t know what my novel will be about, but I started with some freewriting to figure out who my main character is. So far I’ve decided that she lives in an apartment with dark red walls, her name is Ellerie, and she has a job of some sort. It’s a start!

Week one!

The insanity and furious typing are just around the corner!

I’m already doing the “do nanowrimo” goal, but the more the merrier, so here I am. :) Thanks for the invite, brannen!

I’ve signed up. That’s the easy bit. Am very time poor these days so signing up is a little bit of insanity on my part. But if I manage to get a few paragraphs that can grow into a post NaNoWriMo creation, it will have been worth it.

Imagine taking a 30 day vacation. Each day is filled with breathtaking vistas and inspirational sonatas. Smorgasbords of exotic delicacies are sprinkled throughout the day and the only thing you have to accomplish every 24 hours is put 1667 words into your favorite word-processing program.

OK, take away the vacation, the breathtaking vistas, the inspirational sonatas, the smorgasbords, and the idea of having nothing else to do but write. What does that leave you with? NaNoWriMo, the most intense, creativity-filled, over-caffeineted month you’ll possibly ever spend.

Take everything you already have to do and throw writing a novel in one month into the mix. You may have to give up on less necessary activies like bathing and being polite, but trust me, you’ll never regret being able to scratch “write a novel” off of your to do list.