May was going to be THE MONTH. Nanowrimo, as some of you may know, is National Novel Writing Month. Basically you are challenged to write a whole novel in a month. Don’t worry, only you have to read it at that point. The real point is proving that maybe if you sit down and stop making excuses as to why you CAN’T do something, then maybe you’ll surprise yourself.
50,000 words in a month (about 200 pages). Yes, technically that may only be part of your novel, but I’m thinking no matter how long your manuscript will end up, 50k is going to make a bit of a dent.
But wait, you say, it takes place in November.
That is true. And every year I think that I’d love to do that.November, when the weather begins to turn a bit cooler, and we here in the south get our first nights of what we think is really cold weather. Football season is entering its stretch run. Baseball is over with only dreams of spring to tide us over. And to top it off there is this novel writing month that I want to participate in.
And there is something else… Oh, yeah… there is that pesky Thanksgiving Holiday which means about 1 week of possible writing time is about to go out the window.
I don’t know how people do it. And this is coming from a guy who isn’t afraid to break off a few hours everyday into the wee hours of the night to write out that nights 1500 words or whatever it is.
But it is just not in the cards for me in November.
I hit upon an alternate idea: does it have to be November? What if I chose the beginning of a month to start on a book and see if I could get 50k words written. As it would happen, my schedule for writing is something that is a little in flux, dates slide a little here and there, but for the most part I try and stick to it the best I can. And the next big project on my list was a novel. What will end up being my 4th novel when it is done (behind The Dark That Follows, The White Effect, and Hollow Empire).
On May 1, 2014 I sat down to write my 50k words.
On May 31, 2014, I had about 15k in words… not so good.
I could blame life or work or the Beast (writer’s block) or learning a new software (Scrivener), but really I didn’t sit at the computer for long enough during May. And I was humming along in that first week… ugh.
So I failed.
Failed myself. Failed my goal. 1 day off from writing became 2 and that became 3 out of 4. And before I knew it the month was almost over.
They say we learn more from failures than from successes. This is definitely a thought, even if I’m not sure it always applies to everything. Sometimes I think succeeding early just saves you a lot of headache and heartache. I mean, if you’ve figured out the answer the first time around, why do you need to go through all the other crap? So you’ll appreciate it? Eh, I’d rather just move on to the next idea, moment, or whatever.
So, yeah, I’d like to kick “They” in the ass.
Writing is literally filled with failure. Your first draft is horrible. Someone doesn’t like a particular section of it. Agents turn you down. Editors want to take the “soul” out of your work.
All of that is true, but…
Here’s the thing, the calendar switched over giving me 30 more days to try and figure this novel out. A clean slate to do whatever I want. And like the blank page in my document, I can fill it with anything I want.
Anything I want.
I gotta go now… I need to continue writing that novel.
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John McGuire is the author of the supernatural thriller The Dark That Follows, the steampunk comic The Gilded Age, and now the novella There’s Something About Mac through the Amazon Kindle Worlds program. He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com.
Go John!