I first participated in NaNoWriMo in 2011. I was in lectures when I heard someone talking about it, I had no idea what it was and when she explained, well. To a young novice writer who thought she could conquer the world, it sounded incredible. 50 000 words in a month? Pah, I’ll do 80! That’s the kind of head I had on at the time.
So how, three years later, am I now considering not even starting? If you want to know what’s changed just look back at some of my earlier posts. I have dealt with a lot of my development as a writer, but I don’t think this has much to do with that. It has more to do with the kind of story I am writing at the moment.
It has something to do with what NaNo means.
To me it means the First Draft It’s the rushed part that I do to get the bones of a story down. What happens, though, when I already have the bones?
I’m working on something at the moment that I cannot just go into at a crazy pace, I can’t bang out 2k words a day because the writing has to be considered. It has to work. Now I’m not saying that NaNo doesn’t produce writing like that, I am saying that for me… well it didn’t. It produced a vast quantity of words that I had to sift through to find the story. And most of it needed rewriting.
My concern is that if I enter this novel and use NaNo to get 50k words down, then the quality of my writing will decrease. Even if the extra challenge is to write a considered NaNo novel, I know I will slip at times into first draft psychobabble. The problem is that word ‘winner’ that word and my competitive spirit send me into over drive.
So the only way I can see out of this is to use NaNo this year to get down the bones of a new story. I’m not so sure I want to abandon my current one for a month, but sometimes stepping back can bring fresh ideas. Either that or I simply do not participate this year.
But that will be pretty hard, considering my pride and that I don’t like to feel left out. The great thing about NaNo (aside from the graph) is the community. I remember stepping into it as a newbie and feeling welcomed, and now as somewhat of an experienced WriMo (with two wins and one loss at my side) I don’t want to miss out on the 2014 forums.
NaNoWriMo only happens once a year and I think I’d regret it if I missed out. As always I seem to work my way through and out the other side of a problem with a blog post. Thank’s for reading, you’ve been very helpful =]
Jodie Louise 