The Fountain Pen

Progress

I’m not sure if I should be terribly excited, ashamed, embarrassed, stunned, or a combination thereof. I’m on target as of this morning. I needed to be at 20,000 words by the time my head hit the pillow last night (to meet my own goals) and I hit it, exactly (so I wrote 25 more words for good measure). Looking back at yesterday, I was quite a handful to deal with, spewing words of frustration and fear at those who know me best, for I really thought I was going to remain behind. I was down 1,500 words, had a meeting, and then found out my in-laws were making a surprise visit from out of state and that’s when all Hell broke loose. Despite, or maybe because of, the circumstances I made up my deficit and then pushed forward to complete my 2,000 word goal. I managed to write nearly 1,000 words on my lunch break (I’ve usually taken that time to just relax), wrote a few hundred at the meeting, and hacked out another 1,800 when I got home. (At times like this I can imagine my mother calling me “prolific”.)

Observation

At the meeting last night, one of the few participating gentlemen complimented me on my diligence, having read some of this blog (hullo, hullo!) and I merely passed it off a “being lucky.” As I later thought about that, I discovered it’s true in some senses, but not really true at all. I too have been noticing that I am meeting my goals consistently (or making them up) and am well on my way to “winning”. I really cannot say how I am doing it, or where I am finding the motivation to write, so I can only shrug my shoulders about my diligence and just say, “It happens”. Even then I’m trying to figure out how and why, because I will not finish the book at 50,000 words, so I will need to continue writing well beyond the end of NaNoWriMo and the biggest challenge for me will be to maintain a good writing habit and finish the book.

If I have any “secrets” about my “success” it would be a few simple points:

1. I have nearly my entire book outlined, so I know where I am at, what happens next, and what I should be writing, at all times.
2. I flatly refuse to edit or proofread anything I write (until I am done).
   1. I refuse to accept edits, corrections, and changes on anything I write (until I am done).
3. I don’t care how bad things sound, while I write them. I’m more concerned with getting the story done than with making it “pretty” (until I edit).

Maybe this will help some people, maybe it won’t. This is what I have to do just to get the story told, for I am a perfectionist and would otherwise never finish the story (I’ve got a file folder full of these) because I would get stuck on a spot that was not good enough. Hopefully I will find that I can finish this book, then edit it and make it sing with a pleasing harmony, so my readers will stop gouging their eyes out.

Revelation

This will probably be my first and my last NaNoWriMo (though who can tell). I set out to see if I could first of write a book, second of all write 50,000 words in 30 days. I know the answer to those two questions already (though I should wait until I am done to see if my knowing was really knowing … I just love epistemology). The pace being set for me is too much. Too many pieces of my life are on hold, and I cannot sustain that for much longer than a month. There are things I want to do, people I want to visit with, and having to push everything aside just to write 2,000 words a night … there is not enough payoff in the end to make it worthwhile. One thing I will need to figure out, come December, is what pace is comfortable. I will say I am satisfied that I am writing and that it is going well, but I don’t like seeing everything else around me begin to decay.