So, until I started Nanowrimo at the start of this month, I hadn’t written in some time. There were a number of reasons for this (and that lack of writing was one of the reasons why entries had slowed to a trickle on this blog), but a big one was a lack of motivation and a lack of a writing habit.
I had a lot of story ideas, but it was hard to motivate me to write any of them – I still have them, some have been written down and even had outlines created. NaNoWriMo was a well needed boost to my motivation, and even if Changeling’s Fealty ends up sub-par for quality for me and not something I can send to my agent, it still will do me one huge favor:
It got me in the habit of writing. Of feeling disappointed with myself if I didn’t meet a target each day – 1,666 words is what you need to meet the NaNoWriMo goal.
Now, while Fealty will almost certainly pass 50,000 words by the end of the month (my goal for tonight is to pass 32,500, another thousand words from where I currently am ;)), I don’t expect it to be finished by the end of November. It’s going to be shorter than I’d like, and I suspect one of the big editing processes on this one will be bulking it up to 100,000 words, but it is still going to zoom waay past 50,000 words.
And meeting that should be doable. Because I’m back in the habit of writing, and meeting writing goals. I’m posting word counts on FB and LJ almost every day (and not quite so often here, though seeing as how this is my writing-only blog I should probably change that :D). People are being encouraging.
That means that I wil hopefully hold to that habit once the month is over, and finish this book. Possibly by Yule (or slightly afterwards, I have the week Yule falls IN off work).
I think my first completed novel in over a year will be a very nice present to myself.
And advice to you? If you get anything out of NaNoWriMo, take away the habit of writing. Of sitting down every day and writing. Everything else will tend to flow along from there.
Namaste
Glynn
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