30 Days of NaNoWriMo
Kate Langenberg is a freelance writer and editor. Stop by her website at www.katelangenberg.com or follow her on Twitter @kalangenberg.
50,000 of anything is a lot. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of cats.
In my case, it's a lot of words. And it's the number of words I'm supposed to write by November 30. As in 27 days from now. That November 30. Why? Because I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The object is to write your heart out for a solid month without stopping to edit what you've written. It's challenging for a couple of reasons. One, writing practically nonstop for an entire month is a grueling task. Have you ever done it before? Me neither. Two, writing for an entire month without revising what you've written requires endless amounts of self-control, especially if you're a perfectionist who is used to editing as you write. I'm kind of a control freak, so this whole thing is an exercise in letting go...while still going. And going. To some people, NaNoWriMo might sound like the worst kind of self-inflicted torture. Writing is hard, even for those of us who call ourselves writers. This challenge comes at a good time for me, though. I've been looking for a way to motivate myself to write, and believe it or not, NaNoWriMo is providing that impetus. I started writing on Sunday, I wrote more on Monday, and I'm going to write more today. I don't mean to make it sound easy. The truth is, it was tough getting started on Sunday. I stared at a blank Word document for a good 30 minutes before I typed anything. When I started writing, what came out went a lot like this: Why are my upstairs neighbors so loud? Are the acoustics in this place really that bad? Can they hear me as much as I hear them? Oh God, I'm supposed to be writing fiction, not rants about my neighbors. I actually like my neighbors. But I'd probably like them more if they were quieter. That's right—it took half an hour for me to come up with that.I wrote a few more sentences that didn't have anything to do with my neighbors. I described the view outside my kitchen window. Then I deleted all of it (I know, I'm bad; I edited) and wrote one sentence about a woman being woken up from a sound sleep due to a commotion downstairs in her house. I read it ten times, closed my laptop, and called it a day. Then on Monday, something beautiful happened. I read that same sentence to myself and started typing—what, I don't know. Words just came to me and before I knew it, I had a few paragraphs of copy and something resembling the awkward beginnings of a story. I took a deep breath and told myself to keep going. I didn't stop until I had 800 more words on the page. At that point, I got out of my chair and stretched like I had just run a marathon. Reaching a total count of 50,000 words is going to take a lot of time and effort. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that writing will get easier with every day that passes. For me, NaNoWriMo is about challenging myself to write without stopping. It's about pushing past the excuses, real or imagined. If I get just one thing out of this experience—whether it's all 50,000 words, a few short stories, or a novel—what I really want is to reconnect with my writing and make it a daily habit. I've got 27 more days to make it happen.
Posted by Kate Langenberg
