Saturday, November 01, 2014

just say naNOwrimo


Yep, it's that time of year again. Leaves are damp, dying bits of organic compost, we're all diabetic from Halloween, and we're putting our compensatory ass-sitting gadgets in place for a month of marathon writing.

Except, I'm not.

I've done the NaNo. I think, for generative purposes, it's terrific, but at my age, the cons outweigh the pros. The tiny repetitive-motion injuries to obscure, but necessary, muscles and fascia. The headaches. The bleary vision. For me, to write 50K words in a month is physically dangerous. It just is. My eyes, my head, my shoulders.

Better for me is a modified 800 words/five days a week plan. With yoga, walks, and non-screen tasks built in. That's 16K words, folks. Not even a novella. But, it can be just as generous and generative to the idea behind NaNoWriMo, which is, wrapping your mind around a sustainable project, and falling in love with it - seeing it through the long game. Because writing a novel is a long game.

There's the first draft, the second draft, the sixth draft. There's the getting readers excited about it draft. The being able to boil down the idea to a two-sentence conceit draft.

That's why, I'm proposing something different here on this blog post. A sustainable alternative to the life-fast that happens when you're pumping out the pages. Here's how it works:

Choose one project. Doesn't have to be a first draft, either. Commit to visiting it five days a week. Set either a word count or a minute count (e.g. 1K or 90 minutes), and write your last sentence of the day, each day, in the comments section below.

Who's in?