erastes

I have to sit on my hands sometimes—because I really like to JOIN IN. I was terrible in fandom, I’d scramble around to join communities. I remember positively stalking the moderator of Pornish Pixies just to get accepted into that, and if the cool kids were joining up with a writing fest I’d join too.

it’s the same with Nanowrimo. Everyone’s getting all geared up for it, so many of my friends are doing it—and I’m thrilled to bits to hear about their projects and their plans. And so I’m literally forcing myself not to join in because I KNOW that for me it’s just a Licence To Fail. Yes, I can write 1666 words a day, I know I can; but right now even 1000 a day is a struggle, and I’m managing to do that. If I push my luck and try to do 1666 a day for 30 days I’m going to fail, drop out, get despondent, and I Knew Him will probably get bogged down until December which will mean I won’t get it finished by end of year, and even that’s looking worrying even being ON course.

Excuses? Yes, probably. But I think I’ll stick to the self imposed targets for now. I was thinking about doing a short story, but the one I was thinking about submitting to—I think the deadline is end of October, so that’s no good for Nano.

But good luck everybody, I shall be cheering from the sidelines!!! *waves writerly pom poms*

What I think galls me about Nano the most is that everyone calls it “write a novel in a month” which is certainly isn’t. 50k isn’t a novel; it’s a novella at best, and I feel sorry for all the editors and publishers who probably dread December coming around when they get all these terrible first draft submissions of 50,000 words. What I would say it’s good for is doing novellas, or getting started on that novel that you’ve been planning—or, if you are super speedy, and you can break 70k in that month, then all the better! But unless you are writing for Mills and Boon—50k ain’t a novel. It’s too late really, but I wish they’d change the name.

Words done today, so that is good. On track.God knows how, really, as Dad has been very hard to deal with today, if we’ve had the same conversation once, then we’ve had it 20 times. There comes a point when I just can’t bear to have the same conversation one more time.

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