Once Upon a Time...

Just realised date of last post is wrong!... Kinda used it as a test post and edited it a week later, but yeah, from here onwards - plain sailing I hope. After a little encouragement, and a bit of a kicking my own backside into shape (...figure that one out O_o) I think I've decided to take part in this NaNoWriMo thing. Well. Kind of. So what is NaNoWriMo? - Apart from sounding very silly?

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin    writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Sounds pretty substantial. And you're probably right, it damn well is ;D However, my stance will be a fairly more relaxed one. Yes, I'll try to write a 50,000 word novel. But no, not in a month. Hey hey, wait a minute! That defeats the point of the competition then right? Once again, you're probably right. So what's the problem?

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. 

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist... I don't like things to be incomplete or full of crap ;D Not saying that the competitors novels will be crap that is - they'll probably be better than mine anyway! But to be honest, I don't really have the intense interest, nor writing expertise of people that have the time, effort, grit and determination to cram this into one month. Those people are machines! Therefore, I won't actually enter the competition - but set it as a project I can hopefully enjoy, and get something out of. After the external motivation of course, I realised this would be a good challenge to set for myself. I do have an imagination to use after all. I damn well hope I can do it D:

My novel will probably be cliché, unrealistic and all, but hey, who cares! It can be fiction ;P So I'll be starting sometime soon - and finishing in about 10 years no doubt! As I'd like people to interact with this blog (though they never will ;D), I'll put some questions out there.

            - Have you ever thought up your own stories (in your head)?
            - If so, what were they about?


I won't steal ideas haha, but I do find it interesting to listen to them, even if it's very brief. And hey, if you want to say, but are too embarrassed, there's always being Anonymous! I'm now off to dress as a Roman...