I'll never write a novel, I said. I have a short attention span and little self-discipline. I'd get lost and tangled in a work of fiction that took months and years to build.
Now my excuses have been peeled away from me. In an e-mail a friend mentioned Nanowritmo and asked if I were going to take part in it this year.
The aim is to write a novel (really a novella, but why quibble?)of 50,000 words in just one month, November. You can make notes, decide on a plot, but the real writing has to happen in those 30 days.
I have nothing to hide behind. I am not working at the moment. My husband is so busy he doesn't even want to stop and talk about what he wants for dinner. If I totally disappeared from the face of the planet for a month, I doubt anyone very much would notice or care. So if there ever was a a time to write a novel, it's now ... and as a writer I need more than anything the discipline to just sit and get down to it and produce.
Bum glue. The practice of sticking self to chair and just producing. Yes, that's exactly what I need to acquire. Writing crap doesn't matter for Nanowrimo, only the word count.
Writing friend L. tells me that she has signed up, so I have someone to encourage me and share the woes with. Hope that there will be get-togethers locally for brave souls who are embarking on this. And a party at the end.
OK. There's just the small problem of what to write about. I need a plot, don't I? Do I?
To plot a novel before I begin writing it seems so ... boring and limiting and cold. I'm one of these messy people who leap straight in and hope that my characters come up with something themselves. Of course it will be chaos. Of course I'll wander off track. But this way I will certainly have more fun and might even end up with something I can work on afterwards.
But yes, I've decided what the novel will be like, even if I'm not quite sure what it will be about. I need to write something that makes me laugh, that's irreverant sleazy and audacious. I want a raucous cast of characters, none of them innocent, everyone greedy and shallow and self-serving. I want to paint a distorted, grotesque picture of the city I live in and its inhabitants.
So I take out the cooking pot and see what I can throw in. I have a number of characters who appeared withou warning in writing exercises and I wonder what will happen if I apply a little heat and then stir them together?
1 comment:
Hello how are you? That sounds interesting. I have the same problem in a sence, with me though it is people placing more weight upon the delivery; my grammer, for it is not as good as once was, instead of the content, this of course I need to approve on. Some of the best writers hardly used punctuations and this is fine for 'personal' writing. I wish to maybe publish something someday for profit; 'whatever' profit there is in the written word today, and the majority of readers like 'proper' writing, much like the art collector that enjoys himself from 'known' artist. So the problem you have with the 'amount of word' I have with the punctuation. I am glad though this is happening, art in whichever form it is found becomming priceless, for then it becomes free, such as it should be anyway, and the internet is the medium in which the is happening. I wish you well, and much peace.(moment of silence; even though music is playing, forgot, what I , was doing, hmm, so many windows, so many thoughts, arg. 'I wish fluffy was here, we would rule')
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