Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo is a yearly challenge to write 50,000 words during November, or about 1,667 words a day.

The past four years, I've done just that. And it's fun. The end result is nowhere near a finished or polished novel, and more often than not the act of writing quickly results in a lot of - sometimes hilarious - typos and plot holes (Sometime I'll go through my document of mistakes and post some here. Off the top of my head, last year I had a character claim the best way to kill a zombie was to throw a turtle at it, because I put a turtle in the scene and couldn't think of a reason for him to be there).

I'm not doing Nanowrimo this year.

In the past, it fit perfectly well with my ADHD brain that didn't care if the plot changed halfway through because I'm never getting published and it doesn't matter and depression and anxiety and boredom! But now I like taking my time to actually plot and get to know the characters. I know Nanowrimo helps a lot of people with their first draft, but I only end up with an amusing mess that I never want to edit.

I'm missing the craziness of it, but I'm still challenging myself. Every time I get on the computer, I have to write one page. Novel, short story, doesn't matter.

It's day 7. So far, so good. I don't know exactly how many pages I've written (and just to clarify, what I'm calling a page is one screen on Wordpad, 11 point font, single spaced). But I've written 3 short stories, 2 of them are actually pretty good and one that needs work, and worked on my novels (Yes, plural. I love to multitask).

On busy days, I don't need to worry that I'm not meeting the same wordcount as on days where I'm home all day. (Although in the past two days, I've written a 3,000 word story so I probably am getting around 1,667 a day. But it isn't nearly as stressful.)

So. That's what I'm doing this month. Yay.

(I really need to get better at ending posts. :D Maybe I need a tagline or a catchphrase or something.)