That's right, it's time for two things at once. It's the monthly Insecure Writer's Support Group post and it's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are unfamiliar with either of these, please click on their links to read more about them. Both are pretty much exactly what their titles say. As usual, thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh for starting the IWSG and running it so well every month.
As mentioned, this month is NaNoWriMo. That wonderful time of year when hundreds of thousands of seemingly sane people devote an entire month to writing the Great American Novel, or whatever it is being called these days. One month, fifty thousand words. What could possibly go wrong? This is my fourth year attempting NaNo. I won the first two years and failed miserably last year with a whopping 565 words. No, that's not a typo. 565 words in a month. I did have an excuse, and actually a pretty good one this time. I injured my back on November 2nd. I was unable to sit upright for more than a few minutes at a time for the next two and a half weeks. By the time I could type more than a dozen words at one sitting, it was almost Thanksgiving. So I gave up and that novel is still sitting at 565 words.
I have only two regrets from last year's NaNo fiasco. One, I broke my win streak. Two, I allowed myself to stop writing the story. Even though I didn't win NaNo, I should have continued the story as soon as I was able to write again. I WILL be correcting that in the near future. The story is too cool to leave unfinished. It's still trying to crawl out of my brain at times, so I better release it soon before permanent damage occurs.
This year, I'm already several thousand words behind. But I'm not worried. Why not? Because the first year I was almost 30,000 words behind at Thanksgiving and I won. Fear is a great motivator. I was afraid of losing, and that's a good thing. This year, we're going to 50K and beyond. No doubt about it.
