Countown

It's almost time for NaNo and I can say with confidence that I am no closer to knowing where to start come Thursday than I was last week.

My grand plan to deactivate my facebook account came to a screeching halt when I realized that I couldn't access my Spotify account if I did that. I was deactivated for less than a day. Since then it has been a struggle to keep myself away from the website but I've done alright. Apart from scrolling through other people's posts and chatting via messenger with a few people, I've stayed away. It helps that I've blocked it from my home computer but I expect it will be a challenge for me all month.


I went to the NaNoWriMo kick off party! Going to places full of strangers isn't usually my cup of tea and that didn't magically change on Sunday but I met some nice people and as they say the first step is usually the hardest so hopefully now I'll feel free to attend write-ins and the TGIO party in December with a smaller degree of awkwardness.

The best part about it though, was the pep talk by Jim Hines, a writer I had previously never heard of. He talked about some of the usual stuff - it's okay to write crap, there's no One True Way to write a novel, don't rely on your mom for constructive feedback. He also spoke about publishing scams. Awareness of those kinds of things is so critical and I was happy that he was trying to spread the word. Anyway, I appreciated his talk. He was a great speaker, very engaging, and it's always encouraging to hear someone else's success story, particularly when the success story isn't "So I wrote my first novel and now I own a mansion on the moon."

I'm hoping to take some time this week to plan at least a starting point. I have several ideas floating through my brain, including a romance/mystery novel that opens with road rage and telepathy, a mainstream, regular joe work about a girl who gets dumped and has to put her life back together (fiction! I swear!), a re-work of my first NaNo novel to re-set it as YA, or a complete re-write of my second NaNo novel, which I've been dying to finish and haven't quite been able to.

I've been doing a lot of reading about the "rules" for NaNo and trying to decide what I would find acceptable for myself and I haven't been able to make a decision yet. I love my second NaNo novel but I've been wrestling with it for years. It would be nice to dedicate a month to re-writing it from scratch. Then again, I said that was what I was going to do two years ago when I bailed out of NaNo and I'm still basically in the same place.

I guess I'll see what happens on Thursday!

November is coming!

I hadn't given a lot of thought to whether I'd pursue my fourth NaNoWriMo victory this year until a few weeks ago when a friend of mine brought up his plans. It's been a strange year of writing and not writing and writing and not writing and wondering if I even want novel-ing to be a part of my life anymore.

I've given it a lot of thought since that first conversation and I have decided now, finally, that yes I am in fact going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I have a couple of vague story ideas that have been percolating in my brain for quite a while. I don't know if I'll use one of them or not but I will definitely be writing something.

I haven't been writing much in the past few months. I turned my focus to tweeting about music and taking care of other things. Usually when I break from writing it is on accident (i.e. out of laziness) and I spend most of my time feeling guilty about it. It feels strange to have taken such a purposeful break and now to be preparing to return. But I'm glad about it.

I'm also going to try to blog about my experience or at the very least, post updates on my progress and maybe excerpts, if you're lucky. In terms of lessening distractions, I'm not canceling my internet this year but I am going to deactivate my Facebook and Netflix accounts for the duration of November. That should help.

One week! Are you ready?