I’ve almost decided to do National Novel Writing Month. I’ve always had ideas for books running around in my head for years, and never did anything with them. I’ve always thought that NaNoWriMo would be a great way to kick my ass into gear and force myself to finally do it…but I’ve always had the handy excuse of a fulltime, stressful job to not do it. At this particular time, however, I’m freelancing so I have no excuse.
That is scary as hell.
Preparation, though, has been fun. I downloaded and set up Scrivener (Windows beta version), and I absolutely love it. It makes so much sense, is so simple to use, and setting up a logical, flexible structure seems easy. I’ve been researching interesting things, such as bi-racial couples in Victorian Britain. Fascinating stuff.
Can I reliably write 2,000 words a day? (In order to meet the thirty-day goal of 50,000 words, you need to do roughly 1,667 words a day on the average.) I’m not sure. Phil thinks that I will stay with it for a bit, but then stop. The beauty of NaNoWriMo is the whole success/failure setup – if you complete your goal of uploading 50,000 words by the end of the month, you are among the “winners”. Nobody likes to fail, and that places more emphasis on reaching the goal. I’d like to think I have a shot at producing something at the end of the month – clearly not any kind of a finished product, as that isn’t the purpose. It is sitting on your ass in a chair for a solid month, getting the words down (whether you’re feeling it or not) until you have 50,000 words.
Everyone thinks they could be an author. Everyone has that one story that they could tell if they “just had the time”. The difference between those people and people who actually write a novel (good or bad) is just that…getting the words on paper. You may not end up a published author, but at least you know that you completed at least one thing that you dreamed about.
Doing this is definitely one for the Bucket List. :)