Things have been... foggy here lately. November arrived and so did the mists. Remember how an old nickname for the UK used to be "the misty isles?" This is a thing right? I'm not just making this up? I've gone a bit nocturnal recently (whoops) but when I am awake for the little daylight we have here, anything more than a few dozen yards into the distance is a hazy grey.
I love it.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. This year, I got dressed up as a witch and went into the city to celebrate with my friends. We had a marvellous time.
I usually take a little longer than most people to transition from Halloween Mania to Christmas Frenzy. Early November is still Peak Spooky Time. The leaves are still changing! There's still just the slightest chill to the air! And here: the fog.
The fog is great. Nothing seems to suggest a cozy day inside with hot chocolate, a wool blanket, and a couple of ghost stories than fog.
You know what also rolled in off the hills this November?
That's right! This year I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month!
Next September, my Manuscript is due. It's the crux of this entire course. A 35-40k word book for children. So far, I've been writing about 1,500 words per week. Usually over the course of two days. For assignments due in class (ie. rarely part of my manuscript). This is far more than I wrote all summer, but if I wrote 1.5k words of my manuscript every week, it would take 27 weeks to complete a draft of my manuscript.
That's half a year.
And first drafts are never any good. Second drafts generally have some okay content. Third drafts can be acceptable on occasion, but are never as good as a forth draft.
Do you see where I'm going? Because I saw where I was going with those 1,500 a week.
I needed to give myself a little kick, change up my life to make writing the priority.
NaNoWriMo has a pretty silly premise: write 50,000 words in a month. In this particular month. Even if they're terrible words. Even if your story is only 40,000 words. Even if your story is 250,000 words. Even if you get in a huge fight with your family over Thanksgiving and you're super stressed out and you have no time to write this week at all.
November is a terrible month for me. The term will be winding down and I'll have all sorts of things due: rewrites, essays, picture books, etc. But I've decided to be bold and give it a try anyway. I like watching my word count go up on their handy little graphs. I like having scores of other people writing at the same time. I like the pep talks. Basically, I like the outside motivation and the optimism of it all.
Worst case scenario, I'll have an extra couple thousand words of my first draft written.
I'll keep you updated as the month wanders along. In the past two days, I've already written nearly 3.5k.
Until then, here are some of my favorite links about NaNoWriMo (if you are so inclined).
An interview with Stephanie Perkins
A Pep-Talk from Rainbow Rowell
25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo
Best,
Julia