Today is the first day of my first NaNoWriMo, (National Novel Writing Month. No, I didn't know about it either.) I'm pretty sure I babbled my way through a prologue of 1774 words, (after losing 600 words when I did something silly
here.) At least, through the graces of
Paperclippe, I found the awesome
yWriter software. It's free and has lots of very useful tools that I will write more about when I've had a chance to thoroughly explore them. So far, it looks as though it will remove the need for handwritten notes. I'm trying to find a groove, but the basic point of doing NaNo in the first place, is to muscle my way through the process. Regardless of inspiration, regardless of how choppy some bits may be, or the bits I'll need to fill in later, if I can get the bones of this beast built, I'm halfway there.
This is the short story I'm using as the springboard for the novel. (No, I'm not including it for NaNo.) I don't know how regularly I'll be blogging about it, but I wanted to get first impressions down.
It's weird. It's strange to look at word count as the priority. It feels almost unnatural not to obsess over the quality of the writing. It's exhilarating and enervating and yet... It's wonderful. I've made connections with people on an additional level, because they're also participating. It's an adventure worth having. If nothing else, by the end of the month, I'll have pushed myself further in the realm of fiction-writing than I've ever dared to go. It's well worth the strangeness.
So that is the first day. There will be many more. Some wonderful, some frustrating, some grindingly slow. One word at a time, one word right after the other. 30 days, 50k words.
I'm giddy.
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