Today is day 7 of NaNoWriMo. Everyone in my family is still in. My fantasies of all four of us sitting around the kitchen table writing together are starting to dry up. We get two at the table quite often, and we’ve had three…but we’ve never gotten all four of us there, writing at the same time. College Student prefers to write on campus. I guess I can’t blame him too much for that.
I’m staying on track…writing every day…turning off the inner critic…not going back and rereading anything I’ve written previously. If I keep this up, I really will have a draft of this book by the end of the month. And this is turning out to be good for me. I think there are things happening my story that maybe wouldn’t be happening if I wasn’t cranking out the words as quickly as I am. (Just wait until next month when I finally get to go back and revise the mess I’m creating now!)
I’m lucky that I get to do this during the day; my husband can’t start until he gets home from work. And then he’s always disappointed if I’ve already gotten my words in for the day. I keep telling him I’ll sit with him and write some more while he writes. But evening is not my best writing time. And I actually have to write this book — I have a contract for it. The only way I’m going to get it written is if I write during the day. But last night I decided that if my words are in for the day, I’ll sit and read Peter Dunne’s Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot while he writes. Or I’ll make notes on where my story is going next (because pretty soon, I’m not going to know what happens next…I have some vague ideas of what’s going to happen in this middle section, but I’m not sure how I’m going to get to my climax). So we’re still doing it together.
I did have a brief moment of anxiety when I opened the Dunne book last night and one of the first sentences I read was, “Creating crap on purpose is not officially writing.” Isn’t that what we’re doing in NaNoWriMo? Creating crap on purpose? But then he goes on to talk about people who wind up in nursing homes angry with themselves and everyone else for not having done the things they most wanted to do in their lives. And how we all have doubts and fears etc. and that’s why some people never do the thing they most want to do. Because they’re too afraid to take the risk. NoNoWriMo is ALSO about taking risks and getting messy (both of which are good from time to time). So as long as I clean up my mess before I send it to my editor, it’s okay…
