determinedWords on Words by Maggie Stiefvater - My Dear John Letter to NaNoWriMo
My comment/reply:
In writing this you have expressed how I have come to feel about NaNoWriMo and even IndyWriMo in the last week. Then again, at least Indy says you can write fiction, non-fiction, more than one story/book/project within your 30k per month. Maybe if I try Indy again and don't try to only stick to one project/story, I will be able to make it work. I am contemplating doing it as weblit or crowdfunded LiveJournalling/blogging.
I am hoping that I can build some kind of
natnowrimos format/structure that will work for me. Something pretty vague to account for the vagaries of health and other real-world interferences. Maybe something like;"Write 1-x000 words per day be they on your main novel project, short stories, poetry, drabbles, haikus, fiction, non-fiction, LiveJournal posts or long emails. Include anything that you write in Scrivener, GMail, LiveJournal, your Moleskine, on a napkin - anywhere, just write."
Maybe then I can get back to where I was at university and before when there was always a notebook and pen to hand and I wrote pages and pages per day. I know that these days I actually find writing on a keyboard easier and faster - but even then too slow to keep up with my mind1 - than writing with a pen on paper. Sadly I have to work with the available tools and, if no keyboard is available and a plot-kitten pounces (or memoir-kitten, of course), then I should stop what I am doing (if feasible) and write it down. I know that I will not remember the kitten's pounce-reason within a few minutes. Write it down. Now.
Edited to add: I have found doing NaNo/Indy WriNo useful, though, because it has taught me a lot about how I write, how I don't write, why I write, why I don't write and other writing process truths about myself. I have also started to read more, both online and, for the first time in a few years, dead-tree books. I am glad that I started NaNo/Indy this year. Given my newly emerging Writing Mission Statement, above, I may even pick up my memoir that has been languishing since NaNo 2005 (another no-win).
What do you think?
1 I *need* someone to invent a thought dictation and transcription device. NOW!
Chart of my Nov '09 IndyWriMo Progress
crossposted to
natf and natnowrimos 