As I’m sure any of my regular readers here are aware, I had been planning to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, but with a plan — an outline, even — ready in advance of November 1st. The last two months, however, have been extremely busy for me academically, and I have been struggling to balance all of the things I have to do, much less the things I want to do.
Because of this, I hadn’t gotten any real outlining done, as as November crept closer and closer, I was leaning more and more toward the idea that this year really wasn’t a good one for me to do it again. Not in November, while I had teaching committments, and a committee meeting to prepare for, and the like.
But then I got an e-mail reminding me to register for NaNoWriMo this year. And before I’d realized what I was doing, it was done — I was signed up for 2008. And since I’m signed up, I’ve at least go to try. While I don’t think I’ll have enough time to hit the 50,000 work mark this month, I know I’ll write more by trying than if I’d just decided to not participate.
So I might try a different approach. Last year, I worked on a novel, and got 50,000 words of a first draft done. While I do have ideas for a new novel, I also have some shorter projects I’m interested in working on. Thus, I’m going to aim for 50,000 words aggregated over all the new fiction that I write. That might mean two or three short pieces and 30,000 words of a novel, or some other mix. There will be a novel involved, that much is certain.
Anyway, if I’m going to hit my quota for today, I’d better stop blogging and start writing. Well… at least after I finish the other post I’ve been working on for the past week.
