Oct 27
Nope, I haven’t given up yet.
Along the left side of this site you will now find a nice little “Writing” section that will allow you to remain constantly informed about the progress of my literary expedition.. At the bottom of that section you will find a small banner and link to NaNoWriMo’s (NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth) official website. I did not randomly invent the 50,000 word goal. In fact, I am attempting this outrageous feat not on a lark, but as a participant in an annual international literary movement.
The NaNoWriMo challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days (November 1-30). Though I will not actually begin writing until November 1st, in my pledge I extended that deadline to include an additional two weeks. The reasons for this are many (and in no small part include the major life event I expect mid-month when the Wii is launched), but I want to make it clear that although your deadline is December 16th, my goal is to have this book finished within NaNoWriMo’s thirty days. If all goes to plan – and it probably won’t – I will finish my 50,000 words by November 30th (and thus win nanowrimo) and then spend the next two weeks cleaning it up a bit before serving it to you.
The thing about this project, as has been explained to me many times over, is that this month is all about speed. Quantity not Quality. It is expected that my month’s end result will be pretty bad. This month is not about writing a great book, it’s just about writing a book. Beyond November 30th, if I were to still be interested in seeing it published, I should expect to spend the entire following year doing edits and rewrites before the manuscript would be anywhere near a quality worth consideration.
I feel it’s important you all understand that. My first 50,000 words will not be glorious. To even accomplish NaNoWriMo’s goal I will need to maintain a constant pace of 1667 words per day; that’s approximately two hours of hardcore writing each and every single day for an entire month. With that kind of high velocity word production they won’t all be winners.
My goals, ranked by priority, for this exercise are as follows:
1. Just finish the fucking thing.
2. Write something that is not utterly terrible.
3. Write something that is occasionally ‘pretty good’.
That’s about it.
Do me a favor – let’s make like Republicans and keep our expectations low. The extra two weeks in December will, I can only hope, have the effect of sprinkling a little sugar on the plate of chunky vomit I’m giving you to eat.
Alright. Just two more things and I’m outta here…
1. So far I have received eleven FreeMoney emails. Keep them coming.
2. From now on you can keep track of my official NaNoWriMo progress by clicking the “Writing” heading on the left side of this page. They seem to have a pretty robust tracking system over there that might be interesting to check out once the fun starts on the 1st.