…and how I missed it. I have only heard about the NaNoWriMo this year when one of the people over at the Pub mentioned it. And I only investigated the site today, too late to enter the contest this year.
50,000 words (about 175 pages of story) are a long endeavour for me. I have not written any story high above 100 pages in my life – and the longest I’ve written was written in stages, it actually consists of three stories connected by common main characters. When I brought that story together, I changed a few things back in the first story to make sure it all fit together well.
The idea of writing 50,000 words in 30 days (about 1670 words a day) is a bit scary for me. It’s overwhelming, to be honest. Yet I know I can write that many words a day, I know I can write a long story. I have penned out whole novels, but I somehow can’t manage to write them. I have a very strong personal critic in my head. And, just maybe, NaNoWriMo might be exactly what I need to exorcise it. Because this is not about writing the perfectly polished novel – nobody can do that in a month, not even the most productive novelists out there. It’s about writing a mass of text, about letting it all out. It’s about quantity, not quality. And that’s what could help me to finish my novels. If I learn to ‘let it all out’ for the first draft, I know I can write my novels without being afraid of not being ‘good enough’ to write.
Hell, I’m writing a lot of stuff for my blogs, am I not? And all I write here and over at the other two is published basically instantly, is available to every person with access to the internet. So why can’t I just let the stories out and worry about the style and the right wording and grammar problems later on? I don’t really know.
I will try to write along my own NaNoWriMo this year (and maybe enter the contest next year, we’ll see). Maybe this will help me to exorcise the inner critic and become a better writer.
