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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