I'm not overly superstitious, but I do have tendancies. So, I'm thinking my current writing misery was possibly influenced by my last NaNo image, with the crying eye and the question "Why?"...
However, blue butterflies are recurring images in my writer's collage; I believe this one may be luckier. I'm just sayin'...
I know sometimes chasing distracted trains of thought can be productive (the girls in the basement working in strange and marvelous ways) but I'm seriously unsure why we all wanted to watch all the Billy Ray Cyrus clips from Dancing With the Stars on YouTube. Although I am of the momentary opinion that he may still be a better dancer than I am a serious writer...
Consider the addiction to ellipses tonight, after all! However, even if fate and luck are existent, I believe that what you tell yourself matters, so I've got something to say:
I am a GREAT storyteller!
Now, if you need a laugh, some book talk, and a little distraction, check out Samantha Graves and Lani Diane Rich's podcast & website, Will Write For Wine. I am rationing out the podcasts, to motivate myself to write. Mind you, I think Lani's books are brilliant, and will someday get my thoughts together to actually review a book here. I haven't read anything by Sam (who also writes as CJ Barry) but hopefully I will find one in a bookstore this weekend. After I catch up my word count!
2 comments:
I did NaNoWriMo once, in 2005, and that was enough. Yeah, I succeeded, but it was a bunch of drek. I'm not sure I understand the point anymore. So many people fail, and how good can THAT be for a budding writer's self-esteem?
I like what Eugie Foster does. Can't remember what it's called, but the basic idea is that you write 100 words a day. You can write more than 100 words, but when you sit down to write, 100 is your goal. The idea being, of course, that if you manage to do the 100, several hundred more will often follow . . . or not. But in any event, you have satisfied the "daily habit" ritual, you have succeeded, and if you do several hundred words past 100, you have succeeded famously.
The other point is that if you ONLY wrote 100 words a day, you would still have 36,500 words to show for it at the end of a year. Two years to write a short novel? None too speedy, but if someone has yet to complete her first novel, two years isn't all that unreasonable.
. . . and please don't ask me how long it's been since I wrote something other than a blog post :(
Darling Doug-
there are (naturally) a lot of good points that you bring up here, but the essence of NaNo for me is: better a 50,000 word piece of crap than nothing, which is my average product. Plus, being rather impatient and needing a deadline make this my kind of madness.
Jenny Crusie says, there are many roads to Oz, find the one that works for you, and it will be the right one (not a direct quote, more a summary of my understanding.) And in my inbox (with a star!) is proof that you can finish a novel without this particular type of motivation.
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