Belonging

NaNoWriMo is soon upon us. Thousands of people around the world are signing up to officially participate.

As I understand it, the idea is to write 50,000-words from November 1st through the 30th. Not sure if this is for one single story, or if a series of short stories would qualify.

To be honest, I'm not clear on what the appeal is. Writing 50,000-words in thirty days is hardly a problem for me - when I'm writing. I've done nearly three times that since the first of September. But then I will also go through a similar time when I don't get five or ten thousand words.

The word count doesn't really matter to me. I once puked out nearly 30,000-words in a single day. I had awakened in the middle of the night and had nothing better to do so I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Dawn came and I said, "To hell with college. I'm an a roll." And so I just stayed home and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I wrote fairly steady for about fifteen or sixteen hours straight. When I was finished, I had a ton of words. But put together as I had put them they were basically crap. I still have that manuscript, but it's in The Archives as a momento of something that didn't work. I rewrote the thing (it was a Swords of Fire effort) several times since. Very little of what I wrote that night-into-day remains.

I suppose it comes down to how different authors and writers are motivated to write. Many of the blogs I have visited show word count progress. I've used them myself, posting my editing progress on this blog. I have an Excel spreadsheet tracking my chapters for The Sweet Girl right now. I'm at 47,000-words and coming up fast on the climax and ending. I expect to be finished within the week. But my interest in word count stems more from having been told Swords of Fire is too long for a first book, so I'm kind of trying to limit myself. These artificial guidelines have nothing to do with creativity and, in fact (in my opinion), actually gets in the way of creative thought. But that's just me. I've known writers for whom such parameters are exactly what they need.

All that being said and done I am considering NaNoWriMo because my best friend is going to be part of it, as well as a lot of people I've met online. For me it's more about the 'herd sense', of belonging to a group of people with whom I wish to belong. But I probably won't actually 'sign up'. That will work against my creativity. It's not the way I write. And I don't need any recognition for writing the words. I've already given myself recognition for writing even more. For me, it isn't about recognition and it isn't about proving I can do it. It's just about belonging.