This afternoon I was lucky to have a friend come with me to our first 2012 NaNo event. It was her first NaNo event ever actually. We went to a great used book store I had never been to before about an hour away. The small room they normally use for NaNo writers meeting wasn’t big enough for us all. Why? Because we had 4 published romance writers who came to help us work on our “sexual tension” novel parts. It was wonderful. I learned a lot, including how clueless I was as to why I need to know what attracts another character to my main character. How had I even missed that? It could be that I plucked the story idea out of dream I had a week ago and didn’t plan to write it all till the last-minute! Or it could be that I am just not an experienced novelist like they are. Either way, I am so thankful to have gotten to go today and had such a great time!
Here is where my tip for the day comes in. One of the many great ways to write in NaNo is to participate in sprints. In short it is a timed contest of sorts to see how many words you can write for your NaNo in any given amount of time. I really got into these last year with NaNo friends online and I think that might be why I won most of the sprints today at the event and why I won the over all word count for the event. Now I am not going to say the words I wrote are brilliant, at all. But the point of NaNo is not brilliance, it is in the act of pure insanity to simply write 50,000 and to hell with editing any of it till December or beyond. One of the gifts I won though was a book on editing to publish and frankly, I am scared to read it.
As I mentioned to a few of the writers today, publishing to me would be like having sex in public. I love to write because I can write anything in my stories, all those parts that hide in me that no one gets to see as they are not who I am, but whispers maybe of what could have been. I am thankful though to not be, but those parts are still there and they can be embarrassing actually. Like sex in public I would imagine. But the Author who wrote the book had a simple solution. Don’t publish with your actual name. That is something I think I need to hold on to and maybe, just maybe I will be brave enough to edit my NaNo this year. For now, one must focus on getting to 50k! I am however 20% the way there now with over 10k words written. Did I mention I love sprints? I can do about 900 words in 15 minutes. After the first few though I end up in the 700 word range, I burn out fast in my opinion. Just 2 sprints and I make word count for the day. Not every day can I sprint like this, some parts require slow and thoughtful care, it is the start though and so soother I think. Lets see how sprints go for me after we hit the half way part of the month!
Anyway, enjoy writing if that is what you’re doing this month. If you’re doing something else, I hope you enjoy that too. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing this month, change something? Life is too short to not be spending time doing what you love at least part of the time right?
All The Best,
Kimberly
