NaNoWriMo Newbie

Every year it comes and I watch from the sidelines. My fellow writers get excited for National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo. It’s an event where you commit to working on your manuscript(s) every single day of November and, if the gods roll the dice just right and the planets align, you will have a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month.

Sounds like a hefty goal, doesn’t it? That’s why I never signed up when I first heard about it four years ago. It’s not because I didn’t have an outline for a story or even had a Work in Progress (WIP), but it was because I had too many ideas for a novel and I never knew which one to start with. I also felt that my writing ability wasn’t “there” yet.

However, I made a promise to myself to take up more challenges, being older, wiser, and a bit more organized.

In short, this is the year I write a novel.

Well…a draft anyway.

Drafting is going to be difficult because the natural editor in me is going to want to stop and read the paragraph I just poured out of myself and add commas, more adjectives, etc. I’ve always been a slow writer when it comes to what I deem “big picture” projects. It’s been a while since I’ve had projects like this; in fact, the last time was probably college (no, I’m not going to tell you how long ago that was!).

But the drafting challenge is exciting me the most because I will have to resist the temptation of editing and just getting the whole damn thing out. Will it be terrible and not make sense on most pages? Of course it will; it’s a draft!

Andy Warhol said, “Don’t think about making art; just get it done!”

James Thurber said, “Don’t get it right. Just get it written.”

And if it makes you feel any better, Papa Hemingway gave this piece of honesty: “The first draft of anything is shit.”

So that’s my NaNoWriMo goal for 2020: just get the shit over with.

Are you participating this year? Any words of wisdom of your own you would like to share?

Follow me on Twitter (link in the sidebar) or on my official NaNoWriMo page to follow my progress.

I’m sure it will be interesting for everyone.