NaNoWriMo

So, I may have bitten off more than I could chew. An email from an enthusiastic classmate from creative writing told me about this thing called NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. Its basic premise is to encourage writers to be more productive. If you sign up at nanowrimo.org, they provide encouragement and links to other local writers who are participating. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days. That's about 1,667 words per day. A tall task.

With all the other stuff we've got going on this month, including my creative writing class, it would seem that finding time to write that many words per day (let alone that many in a month) would be impossible. I happen to think that while it will be difficult, it won't be impossible. I'm going to set up a schedule for a certain time that I'll be writing. No matter what else is going on, at that time of each day, I'm going to write.

The great thing is that what I write doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be good (at least not beyond or even equal to first draft good). I just have to write. I hope it helps me get past the whole perfectionism thing in my writing (for the first draft anyway). That's one of the things we've talked about in class: the first draft doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to write it. Perfection comes later. Many drafts later.

So, tomorrow, I start NaNoWriMo. I've added a widget to the sidebar of my blog to keep up with how many words I've written per day. Wish me luck!