I Are A Novelist

• Frist draft of 32-pg journal “note”: Check.
• 50k-word NaNoWriMo Novel: Check

The to-do list just got a lot shorter. It feels good to be a novelist, even if the “novel” is incomplete and completely unreadable. By the rules of the NaNoWriMo game, it's a novel. My brain is empty of all cogent or meaningful content, but maybe that's just how these things go.

Although it's a bit old at this point, Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, was on Talk of the Nation last Tuesday. He talks a bit about what seems to be the “normal” trajectory for NaNo novelists, which is that week one is fast and fun and furious and easy, followed by week two where you get tired and hit a wall and wonder why you're doing this, followed by a speeding up in week three and a beer and skittles race to the finish in week four. I guess that sort of fits my experience this time around. Week one was definitely easy and purely fun; words came quickly and easily, and it was exciting to get going. Week two I started dropping the ball, playing catch up, it became harder to motivate or maintain interest in my characters or plot. Week three, though, was really the worst, I think, because the doldrums of week two only got worse. The point is some advice to myself for next year: Days 10-20 or so are the hardest. Make a pact with yourself to keep writing through them, even if its just a couple hundred words a day. If you don't, you won't finish.

Posted 12:29 PM | Comments (9) | NaNoWriMo