NaNoWriMo
…starts in ten days. I’ve been enchanted by the idea of joining the fun ever since I first heard about it two or three years ago. Up until now I’ve always had school to deal with, and while it’s not like I’m unbusy now, being on leave is as good an excuse as any to write a novel, right?
So I’m toying with the idea. I’ll start, at least, though with the head-pounding and the procrastination I went through to knock out that thousand-word Narnia blither-blather a few weeks ago, I doubt I’ll make it past the first day. I know that’s not an attitude that’s likely to get me through thirty 1667-word days, but at least I’m being realistic. That’s what I tell myself, anyway—maybe it’s just another excuse to fail.
When I was little I was sure I’d be a writer when I grew up. Then I was sure I’d be a lawyer, and then an aerospace engineer, and then a mathematician, and then a professor, and then an astrophysicist, and now I’m not sure of anything any more. One thing I do know is that my fiction-writing muscles have atrophied nearly into nonexistence. I can’t recall writing as much as a short story since seventh grade, and I’m not sure I remember how. (I still have a copy of the last story I wrote that year. It was about a hamster who falls asleep and wakes up in a sewer on another planet. His name was Squeaky.)
Over the next week and a half I’ll be idly attempting to dream up a premise, in case I decide to actually give this thing a solid effort. Maybe I’ll have to change the goal from a 50,000-word novel to…50,000 words of nonfiction? Thirty 1,667-word articles, maybe? Hmmm. Ponder ponder ponder.
Tags: writing
October 23rd, 2005 at 10:49 am
Bunnies are cute. I guess its not fiction per se, but if that was with Rafferty, that was 8th grade.
October 24th, 2005 at 10:28 am
Um…yeah. I’m pretending that never happened.
But if I *had* written a bunny poem/story/book o’ crap in eighth grade, it would have been Burroughs—I never had Rafferty.