As I have previously mentioned, I attempted to participate in NaNoWriMo last year and crashed and burned pretty hard. For those unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to complete a 50,000 word manuscript during the month of November. This averages out to about 1,667 words a day, most of them epithets typed over and over again in a cloud of futile rage. I suppose it wasn’t a total failure, as I did learn a lot from the experience, mostly regarding my upper limit for caffeine intake. As it turns out, if I drink more than two shots of espresso in a four-hour period, I shake like a meth addict under cross-examination. More importantly, I learned that if I skip a single day, even if I’m far enough ahead that skipping a day won’t put me behind, I’m done. I read somewhere (again, with the cracked.com articles, I know) that it takes, on average, 66 days of solid, uninterrupted repetition to form a new habit. This is why I don’t skijor.
Now, valuable as my experiences during last year’s NaNoWriMo a have been, there’s no decent, legitimate reason for me to put myself through it again. After all, the goal isn’t really to create the next Great American Novel. The goal, really, is to allow yourself to write poorly. This is also one of the tips from “Writing Fiction For Dummies,” the book I mentioned in my November 11th post. You see, so many people get stuck on the idea of writing everything perfectly on the first go that they get trapped in a constant cycle of self-editing. They never complete their story arc because they’re too busy agonizing over whether smoking pot or shooting smack into their eyeball is more authentic for their character. Thus, the point of NaNoWriMo is not just to push you into writing every day in the hopes of forming a habit, it’s to learn how to push through the mundane mistakes to finish your story before going back and tearing it down.
Because I’m otherwise so kind to myself.
My point is, I learned enough from my first NaNoWriMo attempt to tide me over for a while, and I still have trouble putting some of those lessons to good use (we all just need to agree that 66 days is a really long time). There is absolutely no rationale for starting a new writing project when I’ve already got two in the pipeline (and a third on the way-back burner). Putting myself under that level of stress again, and in a time frame during which I’m also going to have a week-long trip to the Lower 48 to meet some of Honey Badger’s relatives and attend the wedding of one of his college friends, would be an exercise in masochism. All the available data suggests that participating in NaNoWriMo this year would be nothing short of foolhardy, and I’m pretty sure you know where this is headed. Like an amnesia patient, I’ve somehow convinced myself to have another go at it.
Needless to say, if I’m going to tackle the wily beast known as NaNoWriMo, I’m not going to have time to write any blog posts during November. We all know a blog readership can be a fickle audience (don’t be coy about it, you minxes, you), so I don’t want to shut down for a whole month. Plus, It’s rather impressive that I’ve kept at it for a solid six weeks, now. I know myself well enough to know that breaking my momentum would derail me forever. Now, I could write some posts ahead of time and have them ready to post at-will, but that would require a level of forethought and planning I don’t possess. Instead, I propose to post excerpts of my heinous literary crimes on my scheduled posting days. Whatever I wrote that day will be what gets posted. In other words, my postings for the month of November will be random snatches of a larger work. Merry Christmas.
Also, yes.
Now, since I decided to participate, I did come to my senses a little. As stated, I’ve already got two active projects, and starting another smacks of insanity. Therefore, I won’t be participating in the authentic NaNoWriMo. I see the 50,000 word goal as more of a personal challenge than a genuine competition, so I’m going to make it a challenge that will motivate me instead of setting me back. As such, I plan on writing 50,000 words on Project Rebel, and should I succeed I won’t be claiming to have won NaNoWriMo. Instead I will have won at my own invention: National Quit Making Lame Excuses And Just Get It Done Month, or NaQuiMaLaExAnJuGeItDoMo. Granted, the abbreviation could use some work. Maybe I’ll just call it JuGeDoMo.
On November 1st, I will post the already written opening scene of Project Rebel. After that, all bets are off and slightly to the left. I’ll be jumping around from scene to scene, based on my previously constructed outline whenever I get stuck elsewhere. I suspect it’s my only hope for finishing at all. Think of it this way, you have the opportunity to see how shoddy my writing is when it’s fresh and unedited, and you can bask in the smug superiority of your own talents. Or you can join in. If anyone else out there is undertaking the same cruel exercise in self-defeat and crippling doubt, make your hastily composed works of art public. Give us all snippets of the raw, unedited you, and please post your links on my page so I can come read them. If celebrity culture has taught us anything, it’s that exposing yourself is fashionable. This is a way to expose yourself without inviting a legal citations, lawsuits, or thousands of self-inflicted eye-gouging incidents.
Gently Used Foliage 