My #NaNoWriMo math sucks!

Most of you reading this have probably heard me whine about NaNo before, but I’ve had some new followers since last year (Thank You!) so I’ll go ahead and explain NaNoWriMo to you.

Basically, NaNoWriMo is one of the answers out there for anyone who’s ever dreamed of writing a novel.  This is a chance to get one more thing off ye old bucket list.  You sign up on their web site.  It’s free!  They help you track your progress.  Then, the hard part starts.  You attempt to write 50,000 words within a 30 day period.  That translates out to about 1667 words a day.  You don’t edit yourself.  This is free-flowing writing at it’s best, or worse.  This is writing with abandon.  This is the writer’s version of running with sharpened pencils and scissors, at the same time!   Weeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!  At the end of 30 days, you will have the roughest of rough drafts to work on and edit, but at least you’ve created a starting point.  Besides that, it’s very liberating to write without worrying over every little detail of a story.

I deliberated up until midnight, November 1, 2012.  I wanted to do NaNo this year, but it really is a time suck.  But…edits on my work in progress have been going slow.  Slow!  Slow!  Slow!  I’m not sure how to fix a few plot decisions that I made.  Plus, there’s been a ton of other stuff going on behind the scenes.  Some of my problems are just excuses.  Some of them aren’t   Anyways, it’s hard to feel creative when you’re feeling stuck as a person and as a writer.  That’s why I decided to do NaNo.  I needed an outlet, something crazy to help me work out some ideas that have been floating around inside my head.

When I go for something, I try to go all out.  I decided to go for 10,000 words on my first day of writing, starting at midnight and ending at midnight.  For those of you who’ve never done such a thing, I highly recommend doing it at least once in your life.  For those of you who have written this many words, or more, in a twenty-four hour period, you KNOW what a stupid feat this is!  It’s like writing a marathon.  I’m sure there’s a fair bit of insanity involved and you know that there’s going to be a TON of useless words thrown in there.

Seriously?  When my brain got stuck on a plot idea, I took a break, came back, and wrote a bit of random poetry.  Yup!  It’s really awful poetry and it’s just thrown in there between scenes for God only knows what reason.  Its only purpose was to help me figure out where to go next, and it did keep me typing, but it can’t stay there after NaNo is over.  It’s like a squatter randomly moving into you’re attic.  It can’t live there, even if it brings along cake.

Anyway, I believe this NaNo project is the worst piece of dribble I have EVER purposely written.  There might be a few gems floating in there somewhere, but most of it is for me.  I am NOT writing the great American novel.  I’m just trying to unclog my mental pipes.

As far as the math goes, getting a fifth of my word count in isn’t like eating a fifth of a pie.  I’ve got 40,000 words left to write, and 29 days to write them in.  If life were fair, 10,013 words should have put a huge dent in my daily word count.  But this is where my math skills could be lacking.  I still have to write about 1380 words a day in order to finish on time.  I only shaved 287 words off of my daily writing.  Sad!  It seems like it should be more.  It’s sort of like when you think it’s only going to take 15 minutes to get something done, but 2 hours later, you’re still working, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah, it’s a lot like that.

Take Care,

Juli