Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Writing Life: NaNoWriMo

As many of you know I participated in the 2006 National Novel Writing Month where I wrote a novel (50,000 words) in a month. The NaNoWriMo takes place during November. Every year I think about doing another one but decide against it.

The novel I wrote is the first draft of the current novel I'm working on. I'd rather continue to focus on it for now. Getting started on another one, and believe me, there's at least two waiting in the wings right now, would be too much.

This year, my friends in my writing group have been talking about participating. Several of them have suggested that having another project to work on would be good since writing a novel is such a long term project. I have to admit taking a break and writing "FailSafe" was really great. I came back to my novel feeling refreshed and able to look at it from a slightly different point of view.

I also wonder about my endurance. The first time I participated I just didn't have the practice and ability focus like I do now. Now I attend marathon writing sessions where we write in three 1.5 hour sessions with breaks and I have no problems sitting and writing for that long. It would be interesting to do the NaNoWriMo now just to see how my work habits and story processing have changed.

I think I'm going to pass, though. Maybe next year.

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