Monday, November 03, 2008

Anticipation, Tribulation, Jubilation (almost)

Well, it is November again, and you know what that means ... NaNoWriMo has begun! That's right, it is once again National Novel Writing Month, and I am competing again. My post title refers to the predominant feelings I have had regarding NaNoWriMo this year.

First, ANTICIPATION! I have been anticipating this month for nearly 10 months. Why? Because now I have an excuse to write, write, write up a storm, and I probably won't hear too much grief about how much time I am spending on the laptop.

Unfortunately, anticipation made way for TRIBULATION when the month started and I still didn't have a plot, characters, anything even remotely creative to throw on paper. So what did I do? I started two ... that's right, two ... different stories on November 1st. I started with one story, switched to another and wrote over 2200 words in that vein, and then returned to the original. I am considering the other story to be written another time, but for this month it was a good way to get the creative juices flowing and at least some words on paper.

Now, I am feeling some JUBILATION (almost). The almost is because I have managed to write over 7K words on my original story, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to stretch it out into 50,000 words. However, I know that if I am going to do anything this month, I can't allow myself to fall into questioning when I am doing ... this is the month to push my doubts away and just write furiously. It has been too long since I allowed myself to just create without worrying that it was worth it, and it feels good to get to that point again.