I Haz NaNo Brain

For those who haven't heard of it, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It was dreamed up to encourage all those people who want to write a novel "some day" to step up and write it. Lots of people do.

I've participated in NaNo several times, won some, lost some, but always came away with more knowledge about myself and my writing. (You win NaNo by writing 50,000 words on your novel -- good, bad, or incoherent).

My SALEM WITCH TRYOUTS novel was drafted in a NaNo. I had a lot of fun that NaNo.

This NaNo isn't going quite as well. I'm working on my newest book right now. I don't like to say much, so as not to jinx it, but I can drop a few hints... tornadoes, high school, a girl who doesn't like to be touched and a boy who just wants to be left alone. Yeah, probably doesn't tell you much, does it? You'll just have to read it one day.

I got a late start because of other work I had to finish to clear off my desktop. But I expect to be up to speed by Wednesday. (Up to speed means have the appropriate word count suitable for being 12 days in ... which would be 20,000 words...yipes!!...thankfully, they do not have to be coherent).

What I like most about NaNo is that it frees me from writing the perfect sentence/action/scene. Instead, I just go where the characters lead me. After writing fifteen novels, I know I can handle revising and redrafting, so I let myself play with the NaNo draft. That playing has always rewarded me with a little something-something in terms of my writing, even in the times I didn't win NaNo. In SALEM, I freed my inner comedian for the first time, which astonished even me!

This time (for another hint) I'm finding that I'm connected with the emotions of first crushes. I guess you could say I'm freeing my inner heartache. Not quite as much fun as my inner comedian. It has been a long time since my first crush...but that's a subject for next month. Right now I have to go write...I have a date to go break someone's heart this afternoon -- fictionally, of course).

Kelly