Sunday, November 19, 2006

Day 19 and All is Quiet

The end of day 19 for Nanowrimo is rapidly approaching. I have written a pathetic 2788 words. My 11-year-old daughter is on page 28 of her story - I'm up to page 9. She's kicking my butt. But I'm not discouraged. I have always done my best work under pressure. The problem seems to be my inner critic. I realize that the goal of this project is to JUST WRITE, but I can't seem to stop reading and re-reading and editing every single word. I inherently know that this is absolutely contradictory to the plan. And yet...

So, with 11 days and 3 hours left, I am going to dive in for the next hour or two and see if I can actually get some words cranked out. I am using this blog as a pep talk to myself and my inner critic. Tonight's goal is word count. It's all about quantity and not necessarily about quality.

So cover me, I'm going in.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I Must Be NUTS

Halloween always marks the beginning of what I call "The Season of Eating." First there is all of that candy. Then just a few short weeks away we celebrate Thanksgiving with turkey and gravy and all of the fixings. Then comes the Christmas delights - plates of homemade cookies and candy from friends and relatives, followed by a big meal (usually prime rib) on Christmas Day. You would think that is the end - but then we have New Year's Eve with the drinking and snacking. I really don't consider the season over until after SuperBowl - another day of fabulous feasting.

During this very busy time of eating, I have decided to take the leap and finally try to write a book. I found out about something called NanoWrimo through a fiction writing class I just finished. The challenge is to write 50,000 words between Nov. 1st and Nov. 30th. To stay on track, you need to pen approximately 2,000 words per day. It's 3:40 pm and I haven't written a single word yet. Oy. Not starting out very well. But I'm not giving up! I have an outline, I have a plot and subplot, and I have a few characters sketched out. Now all I have to do is put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and JUST DO IT.