NaNoWriMo - Why I won't be writing 50K words this month.

I may need to bow out of NaNoWriMo.

I thought I'd use the redrafting of my novel as part of my wordcount (only using the 'new' words) but I'm already noticing sloppy writing as I try to clock up some NaNo words. I think I should give it a miss this year while I concentrate on quality rather than quantity.

Good luck to all my friends doing NaNo this year. I envy you the helter-skelter race to the finish line, the buzz of writing fast without looking back. Next year I hope to finally have this novel finished and be ready for a fresh start on a new project. NaNo will be just the kick in the pants a new project will need. So NaNo is definitely pencilled in for 2012.

Hope to see some of you there!

(For those of you who are wondering "What is NaNoWriMo?" it's a month-long writing challenge where participants try to write 50,000 words in 30 days. For more information click here.)

2010 - the year that was...

Ok, so it's not quite over yet but to give me the chance to start fresh in 2011 (and to ensure I don't forget) I thought I'd get this one over with now...

When I look back on the past twelve months I could quite easily be disappointed with myself. I feel like I've made very little progress this year as a writer. I haven't sent out many pieces for publication. I'm still yet to complete a first draft of a novel (I say 'a' as opposed to 'my' because I now have three on the go - which could be part of the problem really), and I've failed (though not for want of trying) to have my short story collection Reflections reviewed...anywhere... There you go - failure with a big fat F!

However, when I looked to see what I've actually had published in 2010 (including blogs other than this one) I was surprised. For a year full of writerly-slacking-off I acheived more than I thought - 10 pieces published including 3 poems, 2 pieces in Victorian Writer, a guest review and a handful of interviews. Oh!! And oops, I forgot - a poem in the next Moving Galleries Exhibition...that's a big one, don't know how I forgot that! Not bad, considering the dismal effort I put in to getting anything published this year.

And of course there was NaNoWriMo - churning out just over 50,000 words in 24 days (6 days before deadline) was also a pretty mighty effort. Sure, many of those words wont deserve to ever see the light of day, but there's some good dialogue in there at least and enough 'story/plot/character' to build at the very least a longish short story...

And as usual I read & read & read - around 60 books in total but I won't be boring and list them. Thirteen of them were by Kate Forsyth. If you love fantasy and you haven't read anything by Kate - shame on you - she is an Aussie treasure. A few of my favourites for the year include Bereft by Chris Womersley, The Ghost's Child by Sonya Hartnett, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Fall Girl by Toni Jordan.

As for 2011, as I said in the previous post I have a series of interviews lined up, so I hope you'll stay tuned for those. I hope to keep them coming all year. As for other 'writerly' goals for 2011, I'll save them for another post as this is already becoming a bit of a book...

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays etc...

NaNoWriMo - It's a wrap...

NaNoWriMo finishes for me not with a roar but with a whimper. This is probably because I finished 6 days early, so there was no mad dash, no sprint to the finish line. This was my first attempt at NaNo and I'm glad I made the effort, glad I embraced the challenge. One of my tutors at TAFE instilled in me the following advice - "Don't get it right, get it written" or, in other words, give yourself permission to write badly, first drafts are meant to be rubbish. Nowhere and at no time is this more true than at the end of a hectic 'write or die' 30 days of NaNo maddness.

So, am I happy with what I've written? Yes & No. There are parts of it that I will salvage, either to be used in the rewriting of my NaNo novel, which at just under 51,000 words is by no means finished (whether or not I choose to continue on with it is yet to be decided), or to be used for other shorter pieces of writing - the dialogue alone is useful.

So, was NaNo worth it? Of course! Even if I were to never use a single word I wrote during November, even if I was to delete the file from my hard disk (I won't - I don't delete anything, you never know when that phrase or sentence of dialogue might come in useful) it would still have been worth the effort. I had gotten out of the habit of writing - this is something that has happened to me at different times over the years - so what NaNoWriMo did for me was get me writing again. It gave me the right kind of motivation to turn up at my desk every day, to keep my bum in the chair and my fingers on the keys.

What do I take away from this experience? 1. Give me a deadline and I'll hit it every time! I had already had an inkling this was true for me. I work well under pressure. If I can physically see on a calendar how long I have to complete and submit a piece of writing I find it much easier to get on with the work. I will be setting firm but realistic deadlines for myself for my future writing projects. 2. Write fast. Okay, so maybe 50,000 words in 30 days is a little extreme, but I see no reason why I can't aim to have a 100,000 - 120,000 word first draft finished in say 4 mths. This seems less of a struggle than chipping away at it for a year or maybe two, at which time one of two things would probably happen - either I'd be sick to death of the idea & still be without a completed draft, or I'd have invested so much time in the project that, if in another two years or more when I think it's finally ready to send to a publisher I receive a rejection, I'll be so depressed that I'll never write another word.

Will I participate in NaNoWriMo again? Probably... How about you?