It's that time of the year again...NaNoWriMo is back!!
The National Novel Writing Month is just less than an hour away here on the East Coast, and I am ready! For the next 30 days, I plan on throwing myself into my writing and coming out of this month with a manuscript. My biggest issue with participating in this month has always been that I tend to edit while I write. I don't like moving on from a scene until it is perfect (well not perfect...but as perfect as it's going to get at that point in the book).
But NaNoWriMo isn't about ending the month with a complete, polished manuscript that can be sent to a publisher on December 1st. It's about getting your idea and your material onto paper. It's about pushing yourself beyond your limits and embracing your creativity, letting it take you to places you've never gone before.
So for the next 30 days, I will hide my red pens (or give them to a friend, so I'm not tempted to pull one out and make just a few corrections) and focus solely on putting my words onto paper. I will periodically post updates during the month to track the status and hopefully by the end of November, I'll have a compete (ugly, unedited) manuscript. And in December, I'll post about how much of a pain it is to edit, but at that point...the hard part's over.
Right?
Or else I'll find out that writing it was the easy part and editing it was what stalled me in the first place.
Either way, I am looking forward to the month of November and the challenges it will present that I will strive to overcome. I am looking forward to holding my novel in my hands at the end of this month, proving that I survived NaNoWriMo.
Good luck to any fellow writers out there!! And check out the official NaNoWriMo site: http://www.nanowrimo.org/
Happy Halloween and Happy NaNoWriMo.
