A year or so ago I posted here about why I wasn’t doing NaNoWriMo 2017; basically, I didn’t have the time to map out a story and write a couple of thousand words a day and be able to hit fifty thousand words in thirty days.
This year was going to be the same… but then I had second thoughts.
Some background:
The last three or four months has been pretty rough; a family member has been through the wringer with medical problems and everything else has had to take a back seat, including writing (mostly because with all that going on, focusing on anything writing-related has been all but impossible). And then of course there’s been the downward slide toward hell that is the hallmark of the current political climate — not a day passes without yet another sign that we’re getting closer to living in a fascist state. It’s depressing, and makes thinking about writing and other creative things just that much harder.
Then things changed. The medical problems haven’t gone away but things have improved and continue to improve. On the political front, the last week or so saw the run-up to the midterms and the situation has looked a lot more hopeful.
And so a few days ago I decided to use NaNoWriMo as a boost to get some actual writing done. A small, new, stand-alone project just for this month.
Yes, I know, we’re already a week into November. That’s fine; I’m not worried about really, actually, religiously following NaNoWriMo rules. I’m just using it as a kick in the pants to get me writing again.
So: I thought up a story idea, and the last three days I’ve been slamming that into a timeline. It’s not big; only thirty-three scenes, which is half what it needs to be to have a chance of hitting the fifty-K threshold. But that doesn’t matter. It’s writing, and that’s all that matters. I’m using my own book, Finish Your Book, as my guide.
This morning’s good news about the midterms has been cheering. It might not have been the Blue Wave we were hoping for, but we took control of the House, among other good things, and that means some of the dark clouds have dispersed. Overall, today is a much better day. Today is a good day to open that timeline and start getting scenes down. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Pete Ford 