My Writing Life
I earned my 10,000 word badge today. Even thought I’ve been somewhat sidelined by doctor’s appointments, power outages, and Election Day, I’m still on track with NaNoWriMo. It’s been six whole days. Only 24 to go. Will I make it?
Yes. You know? I think I will. However, I’m not quite sure if those 50,000 words are going to bring me to the place I thought I would be going.
Well, one day down for NaNoWriMo, 2018. The novel I’m working on is one I wrote some idea notes for years ago, and never did anything with it. It’s not a bad premise, maybe it’s even a good one.
For nine years (well, on and off), I have entered the NaNoWriMo writing game. For those who have yet to be initiated into the online writer’s world, that stands for “National Novel Writing Month.” For many years now, NaNoWriMo.org has challenged writers to draft a novel during the month of November. The goal is 50,000 words.
Then, this evening, I was washing dishes. Suddenly, there was a story knocking at the inside of my brain. It wasn’t just the bare concept of a story, but actually had the rudiments of a plot, some interesting characters, a conflict, potential danger…. It wasn’t enough to be a full-grown book, but what book starts out fully grown?
Some days, the words flow freely. You hit that goal mark effortlessly, and float away from the keyboard to bask in the literary sun.
Others, every darned word takes a sump pump to extract, You stare at the screen for hours, and that word count just won’t reach 1,667 no matter how you plead.
Today’s somewhere in between, but close enough to the latter that I needed to take a break before jumping back in to take another lap.
I’m back here now, because I am doing better, and my intentions are to open up that blasted file again in Scrivener, read through everything I’d written back in November, and finally finish that draft. I’m just under half-way done with the story itself, with a great big sign hanging over the file that says, “Some Assembly Required”.
Gayle Nastasi 