Danger! Run away!

[radegund]

Oh, friends. Oh, dear. daegaer, you are a disruptive influence.

I speak of NaNoWriMo, which I had shakily managed to block from my consciousness (or at least to maintain at the level of detached interest) until I read Daegaer's post yesterday. And now I'm all buzzing with it.

I can't. I can't. It's taken me almost four years to write not quite 70,000 words. There's no way in hell that I could contemplate attempting 50,000 in 30 days. (Although, to give me my due, I did write 1,400 words in an hour and ten minutes last night, mainly on the strength of this crazy bubbling.)

Andyetandyetandyet. I couldn't prevent myself from reading through the FAQs on the NaNoWriMo site yesterday afternoon, and I left work with my mind milling.

You see, I could start off with the idea I had a while ago about the young queen in the world where there's a telepathic link between nobles, and she wasn't a noble but a commoner with unexpected telepathic powers, and the king fell in love with her and married her against the wishes of his court, and now the evil courtiers have turned the two of them against each other, driving in a wedge that affects the telepathic link, and they manage to convince the queen that the king doesn't really love her and plans to have her killed as soon as her baby is born, and we start the story with the birth of the baby and the queen's nocturnal flight from the castle (baby in tow), and at the end of the first chapter the king (in another part of the castle) wakes from his drugged sleep and cries out because he felt them go, but it's too late ... and then I don't know how it goes on - except that the sprog must, of course, turn out to be a Baby Of Unusual Powers.

Butbutbut I've already committed myself to finishing my current novel by Christmas. And unless I went insane and frenzied my way to the end of the draft by late October, then let it sit for November while I got on with this other thing, then did my editing in December, there's just no way.

But it might just loosen the literary poker I have up my arse - get me writing like I used to - fluidly, quickly, without worrying about whether I'm redefining the landscape of human endeavour with each pellucid sentence. You know. And this is, after all, my writing life: nobody else has any say in what I write when...

No, I can't. (You can.) I can't.

What think ye?

Comments

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is - if I do very little else other than my job!

I'm thinking that if I could get up at 7:00 every weekday in November, that would give me a good run at it. At present, admittedly, I have difficulty getting up before 8:00, but there'd be a major incentive.

The sensible part of my brain says, "Get a grip. Do it next year." And I think but next year is a long way away - who knows what else I might have on my plate by then?

And then I witter on to my friends about it endlessly :-)

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Mwa-ha-ha!

You have much more of a plot and ideas and characters than me! Do it! Do it! Do it in Huggies!

[radegund.livejournal.com]

What I might do is sign up and then see how October goes with the other novel.

I just looked at the calendar: this is, in fact, a perfect year to do it, because there are five weekends in November.

[ailbhe]

I'm doing it, and I don't even have the beginnings of a plot, or any characters, or a setting, except that I bet it's going to be a female protagonist somewhere cold.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hooray! You'll rock!

(See, hearing about other people doing it makes me happy and excited...)

[stellanova.livejournal.com]

Hee, it's fun. I'm going to sign up again, even though I never finished my epic last year...

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Good luck!

(And by the way, I assume you got my e-mail the other night.)

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I tell you, I'm more than tempted. I'm squirming with the temptation. But I can't decide how much of an insane idea it would be...

You, on the other hand, go for it! I shall experience the glory vicariously, if not at first hand!

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

At the moment, I'm not doing it, because I have given myself a deadline of finishing my novel by the end of the year, and, frankly, arrrrrrgh.

But I am tempted. Very tempted.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

I think I've given in at this stage: spent much of the weekend scribbling plot and setting ideas into a copybook.

The deal I've made with myself is that if I can get my existing novel draft finished - any which way; it doesn't have to be any good - by the end of October, I'm allowed to do NaNoWriMo. I wrote over 3,000 words last week on the strength of this.

I know it's a tall order, but as I said above, next year is a long way away, and I've no idea what other obstacles might be in place by then.