measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revisiting NaNoWriMo The 2002 attempt at NaNoWriMo was reopened this morning. Briefly, but opened. I'd let it sit quietly in a NaNo-labeled folder (with MacOs Jaguar styling for fashion sense) on my desktop. It waited patiently for my return. It's really not as bad as I thought it was. Other than the 5,000 or so words at the end, which I'm not quite sure how they got in there. But hey... it's a start. And I'm impressed at what I wrote rough-draft under deadline. I realized I can do this bloody thing, and quite honestly write pretty well when I'm not being flippant. Journal rantings aside, I can string along some sentences fairly well. I'll play around with it off and on over the summer. Eventually, I'll get it finished. But I also somewhat like the raw, unfinished story, too. It was a first attempt at writing a novel. A quest to see if I could get something up to novella length. And now I know I can. In a way, its form is something I don't want to touch-- I want to be able to look back and say "yep. Here's exactly what I wrote in one month." There's a reason that the creators of ClarisWorks (or Appleworks, as it's known now) made the ability to have revision copies. I'll be keeping an original rough draft, locking it, and keeping it for posterity's sake. Plus, if I get myself completely befuzzled as I edit, I'll have the original thoughts protected. Not necessarily a bad thing. Too much "oooh! oooh! I have an idea!" can be a bad thing. With my luck, I'll attempt to write at 4 a.m. in the morning on Saturday and have a dark scene where some animated gummy worm comes to life and turns everything into a big ol' ball of sunshine. Did I actually just come up with that mental image? Gah. Need caffeine. I'm starting to come up with random ideas for next November, too. I'll make another attempt to write and see how far I can get. The pressure to reach 50,000 is now off. I've done it. I know I can do it. Now I want to really write something that satisfies my need to write. Something from beginning to end in one month, rather than just the 50,000 words. I'm looking to develop organization this year. I might have to mention-- I just feel good about enjoying my writing again. I hated it for so many years. Like so many things, I suppose I just needed to step away from it for a bit to regroup and refocus my passion. Ahhhh.... *starts scribbling ideas* 4:08 p.m. - 11 June 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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