I haven’t written a word for my novel in a week. Normally this is ok because normally I don’t write fiction. I tend to stick to writing blog posts, eBooks and website content, not fiction. This year, though, like an insane person, I decided to try my hand at NaNoWriMo. Not only that, but I told others about it, and have been tweeting updates often. At least, I was when I was writing.
At the moment I have a bit over 4,000 words. A fair amount shy of the 30,000 word goal I set for myself and even less than the 50,000 that NaNoWriMo calls for. I’m just going to start calling this Nano, because National Novel Writing Month and NaNoWriMo is just too long. Why is it “national” novel writing month, anyway? I think it’s fair to say it should be renamed International Novel Writing Month, but InNoWriMo doesn’t sound as good. Oh look, I’m off-topic. That tends to happen when I'm trying to get as many words written as possible without saying anything. Ok, back to blog format, where every word counts and the characters don’t matter.
I decided to do Nano on a whim. The others in my Mastermind group were and hey, I didn’t want to be left out. It’s also a great opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and do something completely different from my day job. I haven’t written in a week and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to again. But, writing for fiction, like coming up with character ideas and describing scenes, has made me slow down and observe things more. It’s made me be more creative and loosened up my brain.
Usually my days consist of migrating websites to a new CMS, designing and developing templates that I already have a plan for and writing based on a particular topic. I can honestly say it’s been a long time since I created something completely from scratch and for no reason at all. I need to get back on the bandwagon and start writing again.
Who else is writing for Nano and how far along are you in your stories? Have you found that writing fiction is having the same effect as it does to me?
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