Today, in the email,
MacWorld announced that November is
Novel Writing Month. You have to write 50,000 words in 30 days to qualify, I blanched, then did the math: that's something like 1,667 words per day, every day, night and day... not counting revisions.
I only wish they had announced this in October so we could mull it over, work out things like story, plot, character. As a poet, I'm in the start anywhere approach and see where it leads. I let the writing surprise (and delight) me.
I can't believe I'm actually contemplating taking a hand at the idea. After all, why I started this blog was to force my hand to write. Haven't done so well, with only 75
blogeens under my belt. But I thought a small novel needs only 30,000 words and a novella only needs 10,000 words. Doable.
Then I pondered: what to write about? Not very good on the make believe dept, though I've read my fair share of fiction, and then some.
But then I thought about my so-called charmed life. Nothing extraordinary but certainly some extraordinary moments,
albeit accidental. Sense of place, local and timing. When, where, how I grew up. Maybe I could be a West Marin County Isabel Allende.
Nah, it has to be fiction. A novel is not a memoir though many memoirs read like novels. And some are pure fiction. I thought: what if I were to use
vignettes of my life and my friends' lives and package it as a memoir of a girl growing up in West Marin in the 60s? I've got enough material to make a go of it.
Meanwhile, tomorrow's election has my attention scattered. The thought of McCain getting elected, dying, and
Palin being President, is positively frightening.
NB: My goal is to try and write a blog a day instead of the novel. (Plotless memoir). I only had 3-4 blogs written for all of 2008 so I'm getting close. Many blogs are still fragments and need fleshing out or tightening as I want them to be at least 1500 -1600 words each, to meet the 50,000 word minimum by Nov 30.
At this point I'm shamelessly stealing from and cannibalizing my emails, but hey, it's still writing. Thank gawd for the Internet so I can seamlessly check my facts and research without leaving my bed (I write in bed—back injury, I can't sit up for long periods of time)...which takes as long as the writing of the pieces. The Obama Irish piece, though not very long, took me two days!
Because I don't like the order where some of the blogs fall as I write them, I'm also pre-posting them in June to Oct as well. I'm also writing several a day just to catch up (it's Nov 22) I've been writing every day, 12 hours a day for over a week now....interesting to note also that I'm mostly writing directly into my blog at this point, no longhand, no Word documents.
Interesting to note that as I write, tangents develop, calve off and become separate blogs. TG for computers. it makes the process effortless.
Transcribing my BAWP notes is taking me days and I get tired, fatigued, cranky, whatever... However, it's over 3400 words long, speaking of word goals. And I have two more workshops to type up.
It's ultimately easier to write something fresh—even if it's mostly crap (at first). I'm learning to put photos in my blogs, another distraction. And hyperlinks...I like that one.
Still to do are my Scotland notes. I need to use the photos ad prompts though, another distraction.
