Nanomania

This is the month designated for writers as National Novel Writing Month, where those of us who like to work with words are challenged to create 50,000 of them in 30 days. Known as NaNoWriMo or Nano for short, it is expected that the flurry of sentences that appear on the page will somehow make sense and come together to form a novel.

This is my fourth year as a nano participant. In 2006, I reached 22,016 words and 117 pages. Nano ’07 yielded 22,432 words and 120 pages, but as I look over those documents now, I’m guessing my ’07 effort was merely a rewrite of my previous year’s attempt with a few extra pages added. I made a few feeble stabs at Nano 2008, but not enough to even stand a chance at achieving 50,000 words.

So, now we come to Nano 2009. This year is really fun! First off, in the past, I had a username and password, but never entered any word count into the web site. Didn’t know how to do it and didn’t take the time to learn. This year, I not only enter my daily word count, I have a group of writing buddies whose progress I follow. I’m encouraged when I pull ahead of some, challenged when I lag behind others.

Nano has been difficult for me since I have that touch of obsessive-compulsiveness when I write. The first sentence has to be perfect before I can move on to the second, which means I’ve written the first few chapters of my work in progress (WIP) at least six dozen times. It leads to boredom and frustration.

Nano doesn’t allow time for that. This year, I turned off my internal editor and find myself immersed in the total of joy of just typing ideas onto the computer screen. It isn’t important if all the beats and tags, all the sensory details, all the right verbs are in place at this point. The objective is to let the ideas tumble out, watch the word count rise, and worry about smoothing it out later.

I can’t leave my OCD traits totally behind, so I took the time to devise an excel spreadsheet that helps me keep track of my progress. How am I doing? I should have 11669 words be the end of today. This morning, when I got home from work, I passed the 7500 mark. That puts me about 4100 words down.

That’s all right. At least I write every day. The last half of my WIP that existed only as fragmented scenes in my head now takes form as something tangible on the page. I may not accomplish 50,000 words, but each one I do write is a word I didn’t have yesterday. That’s called progress.

In this season of swine flu and regular flu and colds, could it be that I have caught – Nanomania?

Thanks for reading my blog.