Medford Star News

28 days.  Tears. Swearing. More than my fair share of Halloween candy.

But it’s done.  My very first novel - finished!

51114 words have never felt so sweet.

Jeez, I’m tired!

So National Novel Writing Month is in full swing.  I’ve been appropriately excited, freaked out, sad, and scared already … and that’s just about my computer starting up (bah da bump! Tracy, that’s for you!).

Anyway, I’m currently 18,461 words in on my journey to 55,000 words by November 30.  And I love it!  Pages and pages of scene development, and almost zero character development.  Then pages and pages of character development, but close to no plot. This is awesomeness at its core.

I’ve fully embraced the “quantity, not quality” aspect of this exercise. But I’ve also found myself falling in love with my characters, watching them (and, hooray!, a plot) develop and unwind. I forgot how much fun this writing stuff can be. I find myself daydreaming about how they are going to react to the challenges I throw in their way.  Hmm, maybe I should be writing that instead of daydreaming about it…

Oh, and I highly recommend leftover Halloween candy as a helping hand for making it through those difficult passages!

Want to watch my progress?  The widgets are now working!

I’ve taken the plunge and have begun National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo (for not-so-short).

You can join me!  You’ve got thirty days to spit out a 50,000 word novel, or in my case, probably 45,000 words of crap and a decent 5,000 short story thrown in.

The point is to just do it - no revisions, no unnecessary hand-wringing over plot holes (aliens! in dresses! at prom! talking SEO! and eating Oreos!), just do it.  Plenty of us talk about it, but who sits down and actually writes.

Well, at least this month, I do.  But I don’t think this blog post counts towards my word count, so I’m outta here!

Check back and cheer me on - I’ll have a widget showing my word count up as soon as it is available from the NaNo site.