The Great Debate

I’m sure anyone that knows me knows what debate I’m talking about. And no, it’s not the presidential debate. It’s something much more important.

I’m talking about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month for those of you living under a rock. Every year I have the eternal debate: will I, won’t I? Should I, shouldn’t I? I’ve only missed one NaNo in the last ten years. Or two in the last twelve, but I didn’t complete my first NaNo, so I don’t feel like it counts.

National Novel Writing Month, is held every November and has thousands of participants from all over the world. The idea is to write a 50,000 novel in 30 days. That’s 1,667 words per day. It’s fun, and exciting, and there’s nothing like it in the world. If you’ve never heard of it and would like to know more, go HERE.

I participated in my first NaNo in 2006. Coincidentally, that was the first time I actually completed a novel. Too bad it fell short of the 50,000 word limit. I skipped the next year, but in 2008 I surprised even myself by completing the challenge, if not the book I was writing. I continued to complete the challenge every year since, save for 2015. I’m not sure why I chose not to participate that year, but I remember feeling antsy for the entire month.

Most years I say I’m not going to bother, most years I’m lying. One year I vowed not to participate, but on November 1st a name popped into my head. And then the entire story, from start to finish. I had some big word counts that year and in fact, I believe that was the longest NaNo novel I’ve written to date.

This year . . . *sigh* The old debate is hanging over me again like the sword of  Damocles . On the one hand, I love the energy and excitement of the month – the camaraderie between the participants, the late nights, the lack of sleep. On the other hand, I have a crap ton of editing to do and an anthology to put together for my book flood.

What to do, what to do.

I’ll let you know next week. We’ll both be surprised.

Or maybe not.

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Wordage Report

Last week wasn’t so much about words written as it was about work done

I polished up and presented a new poem to the Cobourg Poetry Workshop. Our “poemwork” for the month was to write a poem that included: a secret box, a velvet ribbon, an ice cube tray. Mine included all three and I was quite pleased with the resulting poem.

I did a whole afternoon’s worth of research for last week’s final moon post – thirty pages in all, which I then had to distil down to two pages for the blog post. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself, although it might have benefitted from another day or two of polishing.

I also picked a couple of stories to work on with an eye to submitting them for publication, with a third story waiting in the wings. One story could work well either shorter or longer, so I’m going to try both to see which I like better. The other story needs a little more detail. I didn’t finish them, I did make satisfying progress.

Goals For This Week:

1. Work on the edits for Blood Ties
2. Finish up my stories
3. Start new series on Wednesday
4. Come up with NaNo idea – just in case

And that’s what I’ll be up to this week. How about you?