Seven Down, Twenty-Three to Go · 11/08/2005 03:16 AMNational Novel Writing Month is here once again. It’s the race to the bottom of the literary barrel in which participants (such as Yours Truly) try to put out 50,000 words of some serviceable (and some not so serviceable) fiction in pseudo-novel form. This is the Boston Marathon of Literature. Writing a novel is one of those things that a lot of people wish they could do and with effort are capable of, but simply don’t do, for whatever reason. Those who make the attempt may experience the agony of defeat, the inability to finish. Well not this year, kids. 50,000 words is daunting. But sometimes it can be aggravated by the fact that you spent the first week without any word count to speak of, thanks to pesky bacteria. Sometimes it can be relief, since you’d rather spend the day writing fiction than a research paper due next week. Sometimes it’s just daunting, without modifier. It works out to be 1667 words per day, leaving you with ten extra words at the end of the month. Those ten extra words amount to a %0.02 buffer against failure. In other words, you can still skip about two or three words from this quota each week and still make it to the finish line. If you take a look at the right side of the screen, you’ll find a nice dial reporting my current word count. This, ladies and gentlemen reading this at the start of the second week of November, is what a word deficit looks like. It’s like the national budget deficit in that it is upsetting and baffling. The difference is that the national deficit is meaningless, but the NaNoWriMo word deficit is ball and chain you carry with you for the month of November (as long as you continue to have a deficit). To start out at a 10,000 word deficit is one of the worst things I could think of, worse than the prospect of having my appendix removed. That’s right, I’ve drunk the NaNoWriMo kool aid. I consider surgery to be a more desirable fate than failing to win NaNoWriMo in my third attempt. But at your urgings, I’m going to win this year. Starting Friday, I’ll start revealing bits and pieces of my progress on this thing called a NaNo. I’ll even post the best and worst excerpts I’m comfortable sharing. But just to whet your appetite, I’ll give you the one paragraph plot summary (drum roll please):
Then stuff starts happening. I don’t know what exactly. That’s what the writing process is for. Can I get a “hoorah?” Friends, artists, countrymen, lend me your words. Tags: {nanowrimo}
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Narcissistic. Magniloquent. Ampersand. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Sesquipedalian.
— The Girl 11/08/2005 04:19 AM #
You’re falling behind! Get on that word count!
— Whitney 11/11/2005 11:13 AM #