Zatera Ul

I first heard about NaNoWriMo, where crazy people take the month of November to pound out a novel, on November 1. Apparently my husband’s impulsiveness is wearing off on me, because I decided on the spot to do it. The goal is to write a 50,000 word story by the end of the month (quality is less of a consideration than quantity). I wrote 5000 words the first day, but have slowed down a little since then, to preserve my wrists from carpal tunnel problems. My word count is just over 13,000 now, so I’m over 25% done, and a bit ahead of the “schedule”.

As usual, my story features overly long sentences, one- and two-dimensional characters, and really wooden dialogue. It wobbles on the boundary between science fiction and fantasy. I’m making most of it up as I go, but I’m setting it in a sci-fi world that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Whenever I know too much about what is going to happen next, the writing turns into work, so I try to keep throwing in unexpected things. Sometimes the story surprises me back–themes popping out that I didn’t expect, but that make perfect sense in the story.

It reminds me a lot of when I used to write stories all the time. I wrote less as I got older, partly because my standards of fiction kept going up and up. This is a nice exercise, to just write like crazy and not worry so much about whether or not it’s any good.

I’ve decided not to formally register as a participant. Registration is open until November 25, though. The main benefit seems to be the moral support of other writers, as everyone struggles to meet their word count goals.