I have hesitantly decided to try out NaNoWriMo this year. That’s National Novel Writing Month for those unfamiliar. Basically, you commit to writing 50,000 words in one month. If you do it evenly that is 1,667 words a day. That’s a short novel—about the length of The Great Gatsby.
It’s actually a concise novel by today’s standards — more of middle-grade length than adult or YA but still, it’s a lot of words for one month.
We’ll see how it goes. My November is filled with other commitments, travel and holidays and a lot going on at work and D&D (which I am grateful for, always more D&D). But I accomplished Day One at least, and then forgot about any other writing I might have to do and almost forgot to write this blog.
The story — a 1950s redux of a previous book I wrote. I usually refer to it as “Cat Story” but the official title will forever be “I Took The Cat With Me”. It’s been over four years since I worked on it and I’ve decided to rip out most of the old story and try a new flavor. Changing it from contemporary to 1950s, aging up the characters, and experimenting with a new setting. I feel like I’m just writing fanfiction of my own story, but that’s what feels good right now.
I did 1,710 words today. Technically I typed 3,117 words but the extra were words part of an opening scene I wrote yesterday that I retyped and edited along the way. I didn’t want to cheat on day one so I only counted the extra words in that scene that I wrote today.
It’s definitely going to be a trash draft. Or zero draft. And right now I’m not feeling very ambitious long-term, but it feels good to try and write again.
I’ll keep you updated.
With Love,
Natalie