And another NaNoWriMo in the bag, folks. This was a little unusual, since the football team I help coach went two games into the postseason (it was the best season our school has ever had: an undefeated regular season of 10-0, a league championship, and a Division III quarterfinal appearance--congratulations Chris Varner!) so I got off to a slow start. Each day matters in NaNoWriMo, so I found myself suddenly in a deficit that meant I needed over 2,000 words a day.
I have to admit, it could be argued I cheated this time. How do you cheat at a self-imposed deadline? Well, the purest iteration of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. I wrote the third draft of a book I've been stuck on for over three years.
This damn thing has been sitting on my brain for a helluva long time--so long, in fact, that I wrote Beltrunner: Aftermath just to get AWAY from the thing. at this point, I feel a little like a literary Ahab chasing down my white whale even if it ruins me. And I do a lot of my writing at Starbucks, just to complete the allusion.
So I've thrown away about 120,000 words of the story so far, which baffles the few students I talk to privately about writing. I like what Elie Wiesel said about writing and editing: "Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain."
Anyhow, the 50,000 are done, and the story is in better shape than it's been in the first two tries. I feel as if I've avoided the cul-de-sacs that hurt me the first two times through, and now have a much better way forward. I guess we'll see.
Be seeing you!
I have to admit, it could be argued I cheated this time. How do you cheat at a self-imposed deadline? Well, the purest iteration of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. I wrote the third draft of a book I've been stuck on for over three years.
This damn thing has been sitting on my brain for a helluva long time--so long, in fact, that I wrote Beltrunner: Aftermath just to get AWAY from the thing. at this point, I feel a little like a literary Ahab chasing down my white whale even if it ruins me. And I do a lot of my writing at Starbucks, just to complete the allusion.
So I've thrown away about 120,000 words of the story so far, which baffles the few students I talk to privately about writing. I like what Elie Wiesel said about writing and editing: "Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain."
Anyhow, the 50,000 are done, and the story is in better shape than it's been in the first two tries. I feel as if I've avoided the cul-de-sacs that hurt me the first two times through, and now have a much better way forward. I guess we'll see.
Be seeing you!
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