A few weeks ago, Andrea of A Cat of Impossible Colour wrote about how she was signing up for NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month sets anyone who signs up the challenge of producing 50,000 words of fiction in 1 month. The idea is not to revise or rework or critique but to just write, to put words on a page no matter what their quality.
And I thought to myself, I can do this.
The idea is not to revise or rework or critique but to just write, to put words on a page no matter what their quality.
I love to write. I want to be a writer. I originally started this blog so that I would write something every day so that I could practice writing. Every so often, I pull out a book I’ve been working on (since I was 14) or one I’ve started recently (six months ago) and start writing away productively for a few weeks.
But then, I feel the need to read over what I’ve written, and then I feel the need (the allure) to edit what I’ve written, and then the edits force me to re-write other parts, and suddenly I’m bogged down, and other things become more distracting (reading, the Internets, gaming, MissIcy, life in general) and things get abandoned.
Well, not this time.
This time I am allocating the month of November to writing my novel. I have the characters, I have a rough idea of what is happening, I even have a bit of it written already (cheating I know but there are no judges but me). I’m ready to go.
But in order to get to 50000 words, I’m going to have to produce 1666 words a day (give or take) and it’s going to be hard, really hard. I’m going to have to use every nap MissIcy has, every train trip to and from the city, every lunchbreak while I’m at work, every night after MissIcy is in bed. Is this going to be enough time to produce 1666 words everyday? Who knows, but I’m certainly going to try.
But in order to get to 50000 words, I’m going to have to produce 1666 words a day.
Why am I telling you all this I hear you ask? Well for two reasons really.
The first is that maybe you have always dreamed of writing a novel too. Maybe you though, “I just don’t have the time”, or “I’ll get to it one day”. Well guess what, today is the day. You can go and sign up at the NaNoWriMo site right now, and you could be writing your very own novel come Sunday.
The other reason is I’m going to have to temporarily give up all of my other interests for the month of November. I’ll be looking after MissIcy and writing in that order (MrIcy can take care of himself, he's a big boy ^_^), and that’s it. I’m even going to the extent of turning off my access to the Internet for most of the time (as that is where my most insidious distractions come from). So, that means no reading other people’s blogs, no commenting, not much Twittering, and very little blogging.
I’m going to have to temporarily give up all of my other interests for the month of November ... Your regularly scheduled service will resume in December.
Oh, there’ll be some posts here, just not as many as normal, and mostly easy to write things like Vintage Icy and outfit posts. I will be reading comments and replying to them, just not straight away as I normally do, and I’m sure I’ll be letting you know how my word count is going. Your regularly scheduled service will resume in December.
So, until then, I’m going to have to abandon you all to your own devices for a month or so. I’m sure you’ll understand.
INDIVIDUALLY RELATED
So, you tell me
