I am filled with the enthusiasm of October, when time is spent browsing the NaNoWriMo forums and making notes. The NaNo forums are a fantastic place in October. November, too, although in November everyone is scatter-brained, sleep-deprived, and running on caffeine and adrenaline. But, with adoptable lines, characters, and titles, novel dares, and so on, there’s so much creative juice flowing around. Instead of using it, I’m trying to stockpile it for November. Doomed to fail, I know.
At any rate it has me filled with enthusiasm. I shall sit down with my morning coffee and work through to mid-afternoon! think I. Though I haven’t hit 50k in two years, I have the foolish inclination to add to my workload a set of short stories. A dedicated month of serious writing.
Which is all very well and good. I’ll crash and burn in Week Two, as one always does; Week Two, around 15,000 to 25,000 words, is a terrible time wherein the plot is meant to kick in and one flounders around in the dark, tearing at one’s hair and smearing ash over one’s garments. Everything is terrible, the novel is pure trash, and whoops suddenly you’re 4000 words behind and losing ground fast. My hope is that having some short stories to retreat to in difficult moments will give me a break from my novel, revitalise my creative muscles and keep me moving. Whether that actually works remains to be seen.
For now I’m flicking through writing books and browsing websites for prompts. I hope to have a nice stash of them come November, so whenever I have a difficult moment, I can flip open my filofax and pick something.
This is also the first NaNo for which I have had the Writer Emergency Pack. I am actually rather keen to see what sort of quandaries it helps me out of.
Keep this post in mind come November when I start crying and making excuses, and mock me mercilessly. I will need that!