Pages

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

I need a 45-day November

The end of the beginning. No, in truth, not even that. Yes, I "Won!" - where winning is defined as meeting a goal you've set yourself. You and hundreds of thousands of other people, that is.


The goal of fifty thousand words (or more) written during the thirty days of November (or less). I know, that "or less" should have been "or fewer" - but, then the balance of the sentence would be off. Rules? Meh!


Last year, when I did this, I arrived at the end of fifty thousand words, just a little over, and also arrived at a reasonable end to the story I had been writing. How tidy.


This time, as they say - not so much.


There are, easily, another twenty thousand words or so to find before the story is brought to something approaching a finishing point. And probably another story after that to bring the whole saga to a satisfying close.


And I am fried. My own fault, really. It seems I wrote over twenty-four thousand of those words across the long weekend we just had (and last night). Bad KjM.


Next November, yes gentle reader, I intend doing this again next November, I will have to come up with a better plan. The final sprint to the finish, while effective, is not reasonable (even in the context of the unreasonable-ness of the entire project).


Still. I did manage to get over fifty and a half thousand words of this story down on paper, however I achieved it. I am, as I was last year, as pleased with myself as "a cat with two tails".


The above "on paper" was not a linguistic throwback to earlier times. I am the throwback. I wrote the story, on paper, with a fountain pen - two actually. I ran out of cartridges for the first one, before I ran out of words, and time.


I find it satisfying, and freeing from distraction. And I love the fountain pens I have received as gifts from loved ones. They are functional works of art - and I love making use of them to tell tales.


To all and any who embarked on the NaNoWriMo challenge this year, with whom I contributed to the, more than, two billion words written in the month, a heartfelt congratulations for taking on such a wonderfully mad endeavor. The world needs such madness.


It has altogether too much of the other kinds.

2 comments:

  1. 45-day November? I'd like a whole November repeat. I seem to have lost it somewhere. :)
    I love writing on pads longhand. That's the way I always write. My inner editor runs wild and free however. For it, I use mechanical pencil and eraser.
    After that extreme push, I hope you got to take a long nap somewhere!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Laura, I can imagine that November seems to have vanished for you - for many of of us that did the "NaNo thing".

    My inner editor notes some things go by as I write longhand, but I don't try to do much in the way of editing until I reach the end.

    Getting up for work on Monday/Tuesday was not fun. But getting the 50K done was worth it. :)

    ReplyDelete