I’ve been thinking about trying to get something published — you know, in a place where they pay writers rather than just here in this blog and other sites that amount to little more than vanity presses (without the press, no less). That’s why the nature of my posts have been a little different lately. I haven’t submitted anything in years and I feel the need to stretch a bit.
NaNoWriMo is coming up and I’ve toyed with trying that. I’m not sure I have a novel in me — at least not one that I’m ready to write. I tend to prefer shorter forms. And NaNoWriMo is a big commitment — 50,000 words in 30 days. Would that suck up all my free time? And while I agree there is some value in writing a lot without taking the time to edit [editing can always be done later] I don’t think that’s the challenge I want just now.
I considered proposing a shorter variant: Nano-WriMo, but that would be confusing and the Nano prefix is a billionth. 50,000/1,000,000,000 reduces to less than one word. Hey, maybe that means you have to read 2,000 words for every one you write! No, that’s not the balance I’m looking for either. Kilo-WriMo could indicate writing 1,000 words and that would allow plenty of time in a month for editing. I think I’d rather have 1,000 really good words than 50,000 of slop. Plus, I like mysteries and Kilo-WriMo sounds a bit like Killer-WriMo.
Another idea I kicked around was a month of poetry writing, Rhymo-WriMo. That has a certain ring to it. But rhyming poetry seems to be passé these days [even though I still favor it]. As an added challenge, each day could be a different form — limerick, haiku, sonnet… hmmm, I suppose I should make sure there are 30 so I could have something different for every day of the month. That sounds like work, or research, or something.
I suppose I need to give this some more thought….
Let's do Something Cheap and Superficial 
Here’s a little secret about novelists. When you read the first sentence of a novel, you have as much idea where the story’s going as the author did when he wrote it.
The first draft, per Anne Lamott, is sh*t (except she didn’t use an asterisk). The first draft is about creating the story, and nothing more. The hardest part about a first draft is banishing your internal editor, that guy inside that makes you want to go back and make changes here and there to spice up the story. When the editor tries to add his thoughts, he distracts from the task at hand.
That’s why I’ve found Nanowrimo to be so effective. It doesn’t give the editor time to try to interfere. It’s a series of daily sprints to the finish line, and the only thing that happens is the story gets told. It’s not that hard to slam out 2,000 – 3,000 words per day when you don’t look back at where you’ve been.
Second drafts are for adding the flowery language, creating dialogue, and making it spectacular.
I’m almost convinced, but I’m still not sure that’s the challenge I want right now. Thanks for the insight though! ~Tim