NaNoWriMo: or, The Madness Begins!
This will be the 3rd year in a row that I've participated in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. This frenetic, insane, and insanely fun month involves writing a 50,000 word novel. In 30 days. So, no pressure. I started this - and I've kept doing it - because it is an incredible way to begin to work around your inner critic. There has been a wonderful Ira Glass quotation cycling through my various feeds lately that talks about The Gap. You know the one. The gap between your ability to recognize excellent art, and your ability to create excellent art. I've been in the arts my entire life, and it is to this day immensely frustrating when I feel like my creations don't measure up to where I feel they should be. And 80% of the time, it's just my inner critic, doing a number on my confidence, drawing my abilities into question because I can't yet write like Salman Rushdie. It's foolish, but it's a fact of life. I've also had this long recurring, but never realized, desire to write a novel. I'm not really sure why that is; my writing genres have always tended towards the poem and the short story. But ever since the first book I wrote when I was five (I believe it was a hand-illustrated tale of My Little Ponies), I have continued to get that itch, despite never finding something that I felt I could stick with long enough. So NaNoWriMo presents me with a twofold challenge: silence my inner critic, and shut up and write that damn novel already. I would love to talk with any other RT folk who are taking part in this. I just found and joined the NaNoWriMo group on the site, but it doesn't look like there's been a lot of action in a while. If you're interested, join the group and let's get writing! |
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