NaNoWriMo, Creativity, and Time
I love fall. It’s that season where first my visual arts friends do Inktober and fill my social media feeds with art, and then in November a significant chunk of my writer friends do NaNoWriMo.
I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo several times, and never finished once. In fact, I’ve never come close to finishing. I won’t be doing it this year, we have a book to edit. (A book! It’s exciting just typing it.) Writing a novel in a month is a little crazy, and it’s kind of meant to be.
There are two important things I’ve gotten out of my failed attempts, and all my years of collaboration.
1) You Can Make Time.
I work overnights, at a job where I can’t use a computer, a cellphone, or even a notepad. I work every weekend, and most holidays. My co-author works full time on a regular, non-vampire schedule, has a spouse and two young children, and maintains an active schedule of volunteering.
We write a lot on her commute – I’d say most of this book was written while she was on public transportation. We also have a dedicated writing night once a week. Sometimes I wake up to a whole new section of prose. Sometimes I leave one for her. We make time. It takes practice, but we do it.
2) Just Write The Damn Thing
Okay, this is new, I’m still learning. But as we go into our second draft, I am here to tell you – we’re rewriting everything. Even where the scenes themselves aren’t changing, It’s all getting rearranged to make more sense, to tell our story better, in ways we couldn’t see until the story was finished.
You have to finish. It doesn’t matter if it’s ideal. It probably won’t be ideal, and you won’t know in what ways until it is done. Just finish.
[NaNoWriMo Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month. Inktober’s logo, likewise, theirs and not by or associated with us.]
Linnet Quinn
Avatar image by Tim Felce (Airwolfhound) (Linnet - RSPB Fowlmere) [CC BY-SA 2.0(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Latest posts by Linnet Quinn (see all)
- Family Stuff - November 13, 2018
- NaNoWriMo, Creativity, and Time - October 13, 2018
- The First One - September 12, 2018
