NaPoWriMo

Why is National Poetry Writing Month (April) not as big a deal as NaNoWriMo? The latter has a much larger presence, and an official one. NaPoWriMo demands participants to write one poem a day. I think I should be doing that anyway. I think I will give it a try, starting today. Hopefully it will get things moving. Right now, I need a break from writing to exercise and prepare for work tomorrow.

The Real NaNoWriMo Kick-Off

I woke up this morning with the resolution to not only write my quota of 1,250 words for the day, but to make up for missing yesterday, as well. It took me a couple of hours of procrastination to get started, but once I did, it was amazing how quickly my fingers flew. It seems to take me only an hour or an hour and a half to meet the daily quota. I had somehow thought it would take hours upon hours each day. This just goes to show that most of the barriers to succeeding at writing have been in my head. I have quickly discovered that I am completely ready to write my first draft. That is, I have only the bare bones of my plot laid out, but I am perfectly capable of making the rest of the details up as I go. It will be a shitty first draft, but there will be plenty of time to revise it.

I will definitely be donating some $$ to NaNoWriMo. I haven't felt this productive in ages. I can actually picture myself completing the rough draft of this novel in the next couple of months, after a couple of years of fitful progress. I just wish their website was a little faster.

NaNoWriMo Kick-Off

Yesterday evening (it's now late at night) I noticed it was the first day of National Novel Writing Month and decided to join in, despite the lack of forethought regarding the decision. Committing myself, giving myself an actual deadline, and participating with a community to write the novel I've been dinking away at for - what, two years now? - seems like an empowering thing to do. So I joined NaNoWriMo, and only just realized that means I will be writing on average 1,250 words per day for the next month! Talk about going from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds. I no longer have the luxury of not feeling like writing, of wondering whether I should outline or research a little more before writing. This is quite likely one of the best decisions I have every made. I am telling everybody that I am writing a novel this month so that I will be publicly humiliated if I don't finish. It's all about incentives, isn't it?

Since I started in the evening, I am a day behind already! I'm going to have to sit down first thing and start writing tomorrow.