Brainstorming
Well today is the day -- November 1st. What does that mean? For those of you participating in NaNoWriMo 2011, you know exactly what that means. It is time to get cracking on your attempt at writing a whole novel in just one month! I love NaNoWriMo (She Writer GRETCHEN RUBIN was the first to tell me about it, years ago, and I'm pretty sure her experience made it into The Happiness Project) mostly because of the energy, optimism and support it generates for writers. I do feel, however, that NaNo is not for everyone, and that what's best about it is not the notion that you will write a whole novel in a month (a draft, perhaps?), but the structure and goal-setting it encourages.
TAYARI JONES, in fact, expressed my feelings about NaNo beautifully last year in one of her Countdown To Publication posts for Silver Sparrow:
I like the idea of the month of November being devoted to novel writing. I love thinking of thousands of people sitting at their computers and notebooks thinking hard. What worries me is the idea that a novel should be finished at the end of that month. Let us devote November to novel writing, but let us focus more on trying to structure the month in such a way to be nurturing to our artist-selves. Maybe you will spend the month just daydreaming. Or someone else will hire a babysitter one afternoon a week to get some quiet time. Someone else will spend the month reading novels in translation. Yet another person may volunteer her month to reading friends' drafts. You get the idea. There is more to writing than just word count. Spend November being a more dedicated artist, whatever that looks like.
But while I love Tayari's idea of nurturing my artist-self in a variety of ways, I have to admit that for me, devoting November to writing every day seems like the best possible way to do it. So this month, I plan to push myself hard to make progress on the novel I'm working on. I certainly won't feel like I've failed if the whole book isn't done on November 30th, but I will feel like I've let myself down if I don't meet my personal goal of writing at least 1000 words (or more!) every day of the week.
With this in mind, I'd like to invite ALL She Writers, whether you are doing NaNoWriMo or writing fiction, nonfiction, blogposts, plays, screenplays, or poetry -- or even if you are working hard on your dissertation, like one academic I met yesterday -- to join me in what I'm calling SheWriMo, or the She Writes November Writing Challenge.
Every day, I will log on and share my writing goals for the day. At the end of the day, I will log back on and report on how I did. It's that simple. But when it comes to something as hard as writing, simple is good.
I hope you will join me today!
So many people to be congratulated on Dec 1...NationalDanceOnANovelDay?
Congratulations, Jennifer! It's good to see so many of us SheWrites women making our goals!!!
Yay Jennifer yay! Congratulations! Happy dance!
Peggy though you didn't do NaNo the writing you did do must have been satisfying. Congratulations on your successes!
Finished NaNoWriMo! Whew.
When I started this challenge I planned to turn notes-into-novel. Easy, right? Well, didn't happen. What did happen was that I thought of what I had to do to another novel to get it right to submit to an e-publisher and got it done, submitting it today. I got 15K words of a novella written and the rest outlined. And the notes-to-novel got about 15k into being. Oh, and for the program I volunteer for, I wrote 4 public service announcements and rewrote a script. Not 50k words. Not my new novel. But some of the most intense writing in a long time. It worked.
Go Michele!
My usual prompt writing class has been canceled do to the holiday. I'm still going to devote that 1-1/2 hour to writing even though my house is messy and I feel unorganized. I have short stories and a novel to work on!
Yeah! There are people here still - I just knew I wasn't all alone! Yesterday I wrote a follow-up article about Positive Procrastination because I truly believe that sometimes what feels like loss of focus can actually be your intuition guiding you in an effort to help you engage both sides of the brain. If you have time (perhaps you're procrastinating) and want to check it out here's the lead in article http:/
Got two chapters in decent shape today...a major victory over procrastination.
I won 50K words yesterday...today has been tough. Trying to right my home to get ready for the holidays and the next writing mission.
Hi all,
OK, I got through the first set of revisions without pulling my hair out. On to the next chapter!
Hi all,
This is my first time connecting with this particular group--though I've really enjoyed reading the posts. Today, I'm committed to revising at least one of my chapters that I've been avoiding.
28459 words. Going well. Having to do a little research along the way, so didn't get as much accomplished as wished. Also supervised my 11th grade son's English paper on gender studies due today, which he wrote last night and I proofread at 2 AM!!!!!
Debbie, you've been terrific about keeping up with things here, thank you for that! I may not have been posting, but I've been reading!
Just working hard. I was away on Sunday and Monday, and will be away again this coming Sunday and Monday, with no writing done then, so am scribbling hard to make up for it. I know that NaNoWriMo asks for 50,000 words, but I'd like to make it to 60 as this is a first draft that will then go to my co-author for comment. So lots of work!
Spent my 2 hours today writing for my newsletter... I think I'm going to continue this daily writing of 2 hours, but quit posting it on this lonely little wall :) It feels kind of like a party where everyone else has gone home. I'm sure you're all just busy writing. Enjoy!
For my allotted 2 hours today it felt like I was swimming upstream. Then an idea surfaced... I relaxed, the current took me and wrote for the next 2 hours effortlessly. If only I could catch on to that faster.
My 2 hours today were spent on Amazon Author Central - shouldn't have taken so long to update things there, but I struggled a bit with their set up. Oh well - it's a holiday so I'm pretty proud of myself for working at all :)
Hurray Debbie!
I wrote, I blogged. I bored myself, but I wrote, I blogged. Robin
Okay, 2,000 words today. Neither difficult nor easy, but I wasn't particularly feeling inspired, so quit as soon as I hit the mark. Far too nice a day to be inside working ... ah, *this* is why I freelance!
hmm, where did everybody else go? Starting to feel a bit like a "check-in" hog :) My 2 hours went really well today. I used your comment Robin and took my laptop into the room with the warm floor in case more incubating was required. Two hours later I had over 1700 words and a really great start on this project. Almost wanted to just keep going, but my business can't handle a writing only month. Hope all is going well for everyone else.
Thanks Robin...I'll remember that in case today is similar :) Starting my 2 hours of writing time...let's see what I incubated!
Debbie...Heat is a necessary ingredient for incubation which was masquerading as writer's block, Robin
Okay...the 2 hour thing didn't work so great today - I ended up lying on my heated floor with the sun beaming down on me, contemplating life...business ownership...writer's block.. Thank goodness my boss didn't walk in :) Eventually I got moving (likely because I was hungry) and, after eating, created some auto-responders for a program I'm offering. That counts as writing - right?
2 hours...Go!