November is National Novel Writing Month, commonly called
NaNoWriMo by its participants. This is a month dedicated to writing a novel –
50,000 words. As this is gearing up, thousands of writers are getting ready by
laying out their stories in their heads and gathering reams of paper and ink
for their computers. And most of the
women who are mothers and wives, are trying to get done what they can possibly
do ahead of time.
The premise of this is to get your entire story laid out in
writing – just get everything that comes into your head on paper. Editing is not allowed. I believe March is when rewrites are
encouraged. The goal is to write 50k
words in one month. That comes to around 1700 words a day. Not a problem if one
is a prolific writer. My inner editor is
rebellious and she’s always on duty. More often than not I fight with her when
I try to write. For every sentence I write, she wants to rewrite it. I often see
my pen refusing to touch down on paper for fear of not using the right word,
and auto-correcting when I do. Is that a
neurosis?
I attempted to do Nanowrimo several years ago. I started our like gangbusters raking up
leaves and throwing down words, but sadly, I didn’t make it past day two. Why? It
was November, silly. Let’s see, two teenage boys, a yard filled with trees and
a high-maintenance husband. What could go wrong? I couldn’t delegate a darn thing. And let’s not forget Thanksgiving also falls
during this time frame.
When I originally described this national event to a writer
friend, she was silent trying to digest this new information. I could hear her
thinking on the other end of the telephone. She finally spoke up “No editing
allowed?”
“Nope – just continuous writing,
getting everything out and on paper”
“so, what you’re telling me is they
just want you to verbally ’throw up on paper’ that first month?
“Pretty
much.”
“huh.”
This must
be a difficult concept for a precise writer. Her strong suit is Haiku, the
short-hand of poetry.
So this year I will attempt to do my own month of intense
writing - and it won’t be around the holiday
season. I’m thinking either February or
March when the winds are blowing and I’m relegated to staying inside the house
and waiting out the cold weather on my couch for the first signs of Spring, the buds, the birds, and the blooms, to come around.
