National Novel Writing Month, part one

Alright, so I said I would post more and here I am. I want to take a moment to talk about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org). Somewo to three years ago, while listening to the podcast novels as I drove from Port Huron to Dearborn five days a week I heard some of the podcasters talk about it. Basically, it's an organization which challenged others to write a 50,000 word book in the span of just thirty days.

I thought to myself, wow that would be interesting to try. But, did nothing else. The month went on. I thought nothing more. I was in the car driving for three hours a day, there wasn't any time I could devote to trying to write. So then time went on and in 2010, November loomed closer and closer. I thought that it couldn't hurt to try NaNoWriMo. I told myself that I would probably not succeed, but if I was going to go down, I was going down in a blaze of glory.

So, in late October, I was sitting in bed with my laptop and I signed up at the NaNoWriMo website. Gretchen was asleep next to me, and I told myself "I have no idea what I'm going to write about." Which is actually one of the great things about NaNoWriMo. They insist that you start fresh. Nothing that would be able to contribute to the word count could be included if it was written prior to the beginning of the month. It was a few days before November first, and I had a vague idea of the first scene I was going to write.

So then, on Halloween night, right at the stroke of midnight, I started writing. From what I'd learned there was various ways of keeping on task, but the website helped break down the over-all 50k into smaller daily goals. Just try to stay on top of the daily goal each day. I can't remember how much I'd written that night in the first hour, but considering my work shift I needed some sleep.

But, as the days went on, each day I kept reaching the goal. I know there were tons of typos and grammatical errors in what I was writing, but that's one of the lovely things about NaNoWriMo. They tell you not to edit. They just tell you to keep writing. You can edit later, but you can't edit later if there isn't anything to edit, so that's why it's important to keep writing.

As the days went on, I would get home from work late, and instead of spending quality time with Gretchen, I sat down and started writing. I joked with her that she was becoming a NaNoWiDo (ya like that, a nice play on words, I can't take credit for coming up with it). I got through about half the month and then realized that it might actually be possible to complete the goal. So I kept chugging away.
I think I ended up finishing with a full day to spare.

It was amazing. The sense of accomplishment, the realization of a lifelong goal to write a book, all while still dealing with the commute I had. Now that was an accomplishment on top of an accomplishment . . . I was geeked. BUT, I also knew that it was just the first step in process. There was also the post-NaNoWriMo work that would need to be done as well.