NaNoWriMo

Well, I actually did it this year! I signed myself up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) It’s kind of a pledge to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. I tend to write in spurts (just look at the frequency of my blog posts!) and lack the discipline to write daily. If I gain anything from this experience, I’m hoping to scrape just a bit of discipline out of the process and continue to write in a more consistent manner.

I’m trying something quite a bit different with my writing. I essentially have two modes of writing: First there’s the “Train-of-thought” mode where I have a simple subject and just sit down and let it spill out all in a single sitting (such as this blog-post). Second is the “Hyper-Analytical” mode which requires years of research, outlining, brainstorming and generally enough pre-work to prevent the “Great Work” from ever achieving fruition.

So for my NaNoWriMo novel, I’m taking a whole new approach. No plans. No outlines. Not even enough of a thought to attempt to “Train-of-thought” it.

So far, I’ve got about 600 words. And, I think, it’s the start of something that’s at least better than my average as far as story-telling goes.

I’m doing my best to stay out of the story’s way and just let it write itself. So I’m discovering the characters and the story as if I were reading an already published story. It’s kind of a weird feeling, and liberating as well. I’m quite eager to see just how far I can take this and what the finished product looks like.

And it looks like I’m quite good company this… Charlie has signed up, as has Marty. I’ve read fiction from both of them and have been begging for more, so hopefully this is the little nudge that we each need to finally crank out a bit of fiction!