NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. It is also the month of my birthday, two siblings' birthdays, Thanksgiving, and the month before Christmas. Which is why I signed up to write a novel this month. What's that? you say. You're crazy, you say. You haven't written on your blog in months, you say (and I've heard something about it being write-on-your-blog-every-day month too). Why yes, I am a little insane, thanks for noticing. In fact, I'm insane enough to be working on polishing my first dragon book while committing to write the second. Yup. Insane. My patheticness knows no bounds. I'm supposed to keep track of my word count for NaNoWriMo and I can't even figure out how how to do that. (I am certain that these are things I should not be confessing, in case some interested agent/editor someday looks me up and finds out how utterly incompetent I really am. However, in my defense, they say that it is writing ability that will get me published, not my ability to to do a word count. Besides, I'm confident that by then end of this month, I will know how to find a word count.)

So, I spent an hour or so this afternoon writing. I know, an hour a day does not a novel make, at least not in one month. However, I spent most of the morning reading On Writing, by Stephen King, since I have been told on countless blogs that I should read that to improve my writing. And since I am focusing on my writing this month, this seemed like a good time to read his book. Except that reading does get in the way of writing. It's an issue I will have to work on throughout the month, I guess. In any case, I realized that my 'writing' muscles are woefully under developed. The idea of this month, and the reason I decided to do this instead of working on next month's Christmas presents, is to turn off the editor and just write. Create. That sounds like bliss. I just have a hard time doing it. I have barely one page written so far today (though single spaced, since I never fiddle with lines and page numbering and what-not until later) and I found myself going back and changing this word or that instead of moving forward. I have a lot to learn and I look forward to learning it.

Now, if they could have made NaNoWriMo in March when I don't have birthdays and holidays to contend with, this would be perfect.