I'm probably the last to start stressing about NaNo, to be honest, since I've had plenty to distract me until now (one of which remains incomplete which I WILL finish tonight) such that I haven't even been on the NaNo website yet. But now I'm starting to get a little worried.
The story I'm writing is a restart of a novel I began in September and didn't get far into, this time with better motivations and two POV characters instead of one. I've done some planning and investigated the characters a bit, their beliefs and approaches and motivations. As far as that is concerned, I'm good. I've done as much as I think is appropriate for my way of writing - enough to know what's going on without sapping my passion for the story.
But of course there are doubts. There are always doubts, but when NaNoWriMo is concerned, those doubts are magnified. I really struggled with NaNo last year and lack the in-person support I became used to in previous years with write-ins in a cafe in my old region (now a roaring success under the MLs who took over from me in spite of it being those same two individuals who were the biggest troublemakers when I was an ML; I saw them at the weekend and they still make me laugh with their arguing). But yes. In-person write-ins were great for me and now I'm back in Ruralton where the only writing group in the town is composed of people my mother's age (including my mother) reading out and critiquing, but never chatting, working through problems, having word wars, and worst of all, no stickers.
So of course I'm wondering - can I do it without the support network there? Am I good enough to tell this story? After months of not writing much at all, and when I have it being normally under 600 words a day, can I keep up with 1667 words a day for a whole month?
When I have written, 500 to 600 words seems to be about my limit, and furthermore about the amount written in the length of an album (so about 45 minutes) which is pretty much as much time as I have to write although I suppose I can cut out some internet time and cook up a load of food at the weekend so I only have to take something out of the freezer and put it in the microwave for 5 minutes for dinner, rather than taking however long to cook from scratch or nip down to the supermarket to grab ingredients for a sandwich. But even making more time in the evening, on the rare occasions I've clicked "play" a second time on the album I'm writing to to keep going, I've not gone far past 800 words total for the evening - I've lost momentum, run out of... energy, mostly. Inspiration. Confidence. The ability to care.
So who else is struggling and stressing at this stage? What has helped you move past it? For those writing daily, how do you deal with the step up from whatever your daily word target is to your NaNo daily word target?
The story I'm writing is a restart of a novel I began in September and didn't get far into, this time with better motivations and two POV characters instead of one. I've done some planning and investigated the characters a bit, their beliefs and approaches and motivations. As far as that is concerned, I'm good. I've done as much as I think is appropriate for my way of writing - enough to know what's going on without sapping my passion for the story.
But of course there are doubts. There are always doubts, but when NaNoWriMo is concerned, those doubts are magnified. I really struggled with NaNo last year and lack the in-person support I became used to in previous years with write-ins in a cafe in my old region (now a roaring success under the MLs who took over from me in spite of it being those same two individuals who were the biggest troublemakers when I was an ML; I saw them at the weekend and they still make me laugh with their arguing). But yes. In-person write-ins were great for me and now I'm back in Ruralton where the only writing group in the town is composed of people my mother's age (including my mother) reading out and critiquing, but never chatting, working through problems, having word wars, and worst of all, no stickers.
So of course I'm wondering - can I do it without the support network there? Am I good enough to tell this story? After months of not writing much at all, and when I have it being normally under 600 words a day, can I keep up with 1667 words a day for a whole month?
When I have written, 500 to 600 words seems to be about my limit, and furthermore about the amount written in the length of an album (so about 45 minutes) which is pretty much as much time as I have to write although I suppose I can cut out some internet time and cook up a load of food at the weekend so I only have to take something out of the freezer and put it in the microwave for 5 minutes for dinner, rather than taking however long to cook from scratch or nip down to the supermarket to grab ingredients for a sandwich. But even making more time in the evening, on the rare occasions I've clicked "play" a second time on the album I'm writing to to keep going, I've not gone far past 800 words total for the evening - I've lost momentum, run out of... energy, mostly. Inspiration. Confidence. The ability to care.
So who else is struggling and stressing at this stage? What has helped you move past it? For those writing daily, how do you deal with the step up from whatever your daily word target is to your NaNo daily word target?
Maester
Sage
Auror
