Reading to Write

My Path to Becoming an Author

NaNoWriMo revisited

NaNoWriMo is in full swing and I am, once again, trying to keep myself motivated.

This is my third attempt.  The two previous times (last November and the August Camp) I can’t even say I failed because my participation was so small as to be unnoticeable.  I don’t remember the actual word count those other times, but I know it was less than 10,000 because I’ve put the bits and pieces of the novel I was working on last November into yWriter and, even though I had added to them somewhat over this past year, they still didn’t it the 10k mark.  So, I’m embarrassed to say, I didn’t even write a quarter of the needed words. The August Camp was just as bad.  I was  4 days late getting started because I was traveling.  When I got home, I had so much catching up to do on other things, it soon became obvious I wasn’t going to be able to catch up.  I think I may have worked on it a total of 8 days before giving up.

I considered the past and tried to figure out what I needed to do differently…..if you keep repeating the same procedures, you can expect to get the same results.  Right?  I realized that I tried a full-on pantsing the first time.  I had a short piece that I had written for a class and I felt it had possibilities to make a novel.  I simply sat down at the keyboard on November 1st with the “Chapter 1” open beside me and started adding to it.  I was soon lost in the trees and never figured out how to get to the forest.   My “inner editor” would not let me forge ahead and I soon gave up.

Last summer, when I decided to do the August camp, I chose a different story idea.  I had been playing with a character in the Friday Fictioneers that was then being run by Madison Woods.  Through this fun exercise with dozens of supportive writers, I was learning to take little pieces and put them together to make a larger story.  I decided to use those pieces as an outline to reach for those magical 50,000 words. It might have worked, if “life” hadn’t interfered.

This time, I’m kind of a NaNo rebel.  I dug out the first piece and spent a couple of months randomly doing research and making notes.  I didn’t exactly create an outline, but I’ve got a summary and a synopsis along with a list of main characters and locations.  I put it all into yWriter, including the better pieces of last year’s effort.  Now, I’m adding to it.  It’s been a week today and I haven’t written that first word the past two days, but I’m not giving up.  I’ve got 8352, mostly, new words done.  I am sandwiching the old stuff into the new and I have a total of seven chapters.  They aren’t sequential, but they are there.  The original opening passages are now labeled chapters six through nine.  When I get to them, I may keep them and move ahead or scrap them and do a total re-vision.

At the moment, I have chapters 1-3 in yWriter and I’m working on chapter four.  I’m about 3000 words behind, but I’m not giving up.  I am determined to keep going back to it.  This year, I will keep writing until the end.  Even if I only wind up with half the needed word count, it will be an improvement and that is enough to keep me going.  If I do win the race, it will be through dogged determination.   My mantra is “You haven’t failed, unless you stop trying.”  This year, even if I don’t win, I will not fail.

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