NaNo used to be an off-brand Tamagotchi

I decided about a week ago or so that for the first time ever, I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. In case you haven’t heard of it, November is National Novel Writing Month, and every year, there’s a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel from midnight on November 1st and have it completed by 11:59:59 PM November 30th. I haven’t written fiction since I wrote my last fanfic last December, so this is definitely going to be a challenge for me. Even my longest fanfic was only 5 chapters and 5,431 words (I just checked). Writing something ten times longer is going to be interesting simply because I have commitment issues when it comes to my writing. I blame Power of the Pen for this. I kick ass at short stories, but if you want me to write for more than 40 minutes at a time, forget it! At least with NaNo, I don’t have to share my novel if I don’t want to. The contest is simply about length, not necessarily quality. Although, this is me we’re talking about, so anything less than perfect doesn’t satisfy me, but I have a feeling that once I get into this, I’ll be singing a different tune. When I wrote fanfiction last fall, I always felt pressured to write well because I had so many people listing me as a favorite author. And if I was going to put something I wrote out for the world to read, I wanted it to be something I could be proud of, at least in technique. Even if you mock fanfiction, I think you’d agree that my stories were good. The only difference between good fanfiction and a novel is that fanfiction reuses characters created by someone else. It’s like a sequel to a movie. Anyway, even though you can write fanfiction for NaNo, I’m not going to do that. For one thing, I love NCIS, but I just don’t think I can write 50,000 words on it. Plus, I want to try something completely different.

To help me prepare, I have some ideas of what I want to write about floating in my head, and hopefully this weekend I can draft an outline before NaNo starts Monday morning. I’ve also downloaded a new word processor called Focus Writer. Actually, it’s what I’m writing this entry on, just so I have practice on using this thing before I attempt something serious. It’s fantastic. It’s an incredibly simple interface, and you can use your own pictures as a background image. I’ve selected a calming beach scene. You can also change the size of your writing space and the opacity of it. I want to be able to see the ocean behind my words, and since this isn’t a distracting type of picture, I can get away with it. The best part is that it’s full screen! No temptations of little buttons at the bottom of my screen on the toolbar. If I need the toolbar, I can get to it, but it’s not in my face. Ooh! I know! I’ll take a screen shot of what I’ve written so you all can see what I’m talking about. It’ll be one of those pictures in a picture thing, like the intro to Modern Family.

Spiffylicious. (ooh, that’s a new one!)

I also need to update my writing playlist. Right now, it’s a lot of super sad songs, and while I think part of what I’ll be writing will be sad, it’s not going to be nearly as depressing as what I wrote a year ago. Probably because I’m not nearly as depressed now. Go figure!

Oh, and before anyone asks, I’m not going to share the details of my writing. Maybe after the novel is done, but I make no promises. It’s a very scary thing to pour your heart and soul into something artistic and then have it insulted, kicked around, and spat on. I should know, I had quite possibly one of the strictest flute teachers known to man. Anyway, I’m taking the stress of “being perfect” out of the equation. If I do share my novel when it’s done, it’s only going to be after I edit it. I may throw you all little nuggets here and there, but don’t expect a daily (or weekly!) update on what’s going on in the details of my book. I feel comfortable saying how many words I’ve written, or vague things such as how I’m feeling about what I’m writing. I will tell you this much: what I plan on writing about is loosely based on personal experiences, which is why I’m so guarded about it. We all know what happens when things based on real life (even if it’s real life fictionalized) get published. Go watch the movie Music and Lyrics and you’ll see what I mean.

One final thought before I drift into dreamland (yup, totally not posting this before I go to sleep. If you’re reading this, I wrote last night to help me relax and get to sleep. It’s working). I know I’ve been a smidge sporadic with a posting schedule as far as blogging goes. I honestly don’t know how much I’ll want to blog for the next month, or even if I’ll have time. Of course November is a super busy month for me with school things, plus Thanksgiving is thrown in there, and, you know, LIFE. So don’t be worried if I don’t blog at all. But please be pleasantly surprised if I fit an entry in here or there.

Peace, love, and fiberbeds!

~ Christine

P.S. So when I was saving this, I noticed that Focus Writer has a daily goal feature that tells you how close you are to completing your daily goal of writing, in either time or word count. I’m at 88% with this entry, but right now the daily goal is only set at 30 minutes.