At last, I have finally typed my 50,000th word, which makes me an official winner of National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo.) Something like 80 percent of the people who sign up drop out before reaching their goal, and I completely understand why. It's the kind of thing that sounds far easier than it actually turns out to be... and then some oddballs make it even harder for themselves by deciding to write a novel in Esperanto, or writing the entire thing dressed in a chicken costume while sitting in the window of a bookstore (nope, not making it up.) Congrats to Keris, who also won, and the many (around 250) Mancunians taking part.
I was lucky in happening to have a big fat chunk of time to devote to it during the month of November, but not blogging sure helped a lot. The book is far from finished, but I've gotten most of it down. Sure, it's in a raggedy, sure-to-be-rewritten-extensively incarnation, but even having something to edit is a first for me. I've always been derailed at the "sort of thinking about writing some fiction" stage before. NaNo was a very good motivator; it forced me to sit on my internal editor and just barf it out. (You see, it's just that flavour of gruesomely mixed metaphor action that will make my work a delight to read.)
Anyway, now I can go back to my accustomed life of blogging and wasting vast amounts of time on the internet. Starting in grand style with the Manchester blogmeet Saturday at 3pm at The Castle on Oldham Street. A few folks have already said they'll be there and I'm looking forward to catching up with ConnectMedia Craig, James Yer Mam!, C. Mancubist and Jon the Beef and meeting Rachael of The Console.
7 comments:
Well done, kiddo! Writing a novel is something that I had a brief flirtation with a few years back, but I decided that I wasn't intelligent enough. Probably for the best.
See you Saturday!
Congratulations from your proud Papa. Dad
Congratulations!
Kate
Well done indeed. I wrote a novel a few years back but it took best part of a year to complete and then I found no publisher or agent would touch it. Disappointing of course, but I'm glad I did it instead of talking about it like so many. i'm sure your book will be a little gem though.
Congratulations. So when will the rest of us get to read it?
Sorry I missed the Blogmeet Occasion.
Many congratulations. I'm in the process of pulling together some ideas but it's a long hard slog!
I'd really appreciate any help you can offer on concentration methods or anything else you used to sit yourself down and write. I myself am finding that I have 'moments of inspiration' and in those times a torrent of words and images burst forth. However I have now gone about 4 weeks without contributing anything further to the novel.
Anything you can add would be most useful!
Cheers
ED
Ed - All I can say is that the BIC method worked for me. BIC = Butt In Chair. If you can somehow commit to sitting at the computer for at least an hour a day to work on the novel, or at even just think about it if you don't feel inspired, then you're bound to make progress.
Good luck!
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