"Jul know wri wha?" I hear you ask. If you've heard of "nanowrimo" then it's that but in July. And for the rest of the readers still looking at the screen and thinking "she's been at the happy sauce, with extra crazy juice" then I say, yes, I have a bit. Whatever it takes to get up in the morning. But I haven't entirely lost my mind (not entirely; there's definitely, oh, about ten percent still working as normal. Okay, maybe five). Essentially these two things are both challenges for writers, with the goal to write 50,000 words in one month. 50,000. One month. Shiiiit...
For some reason I thought, "this is a good idea, it will push me to get that first draft finished, force me to just keep writing the damned thing until it's done." And that's true. But that hasn't stopped me from slightly panicking about the prospect. I think I can do it. I hope I can do it. Damn, I know I can do it if I actually stay focused and get the words down. I may end up with calloused fingers, a twitch in my cheek and the staring eyes of a Tarsier that's been at the coffee too much, but I can get it done. And I will document my adventure here for all to read. At the very least it will be an education.
So from this point on the schedule is back in place for the blog. I will be posting on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I doubt I'll have time for anything in between but hey, you never know. Maybe little ones along the lines of "My fingers really hurt", or "I must hunt down whoever came up with this writer's challenge and feed them to hungry hippos". I'll aim to have Saturdays be an article, review or something interesting, and Wednesday's edition to be me rambling like a loon about the week I've had. And no, you may not place bets on how long it is before I fall off this log and fail to post on time. That would just be mean.
If anyone else out there would like to join in the torture... ah, I mean opportunity that julnowrimo offers than head on over to their site and sign up: http://julnowrimo.com/. Only eight days to go...
Hmmm .... that's slightly tempting if I can find my last draft ('draft' I say ... a couple of short chapters and some ideas). But I think I could just sit down and write it all out. Yes. It'd be shit - ill conceived and haphazard, but it would at least *exist* and then (in theory) merely need refinement and re-working.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I have no idea how much 50,000 words is ... half a 'proper' novel? 150-200 pages? Yikes. Poor fingers. Hmmmmmm .....
50,000 words is a good chunk of a novel but not the whole thing. A "decent" sized novel would be around 70,000 (for a short novel) to 100,000 words (for a longer, more standard sized novel). So 50,000 is a good way to get a lot of it done. (I have learned this from reading professional - aka, been there done that - writers who seem to agree on this word count generally for novels, especially for first-timers.)
ReplyDeleteI too am prepared to create some major poo in this challenge but, as you say, it means it at least exists and I can go back and fix it in rewrites. That's the theory anyway...