National Novel Writing Month

Day 3 = 4,504 words

It's that time of year again -- National Novel Writing Month -- and for the second year, I'm taking the plunge. Last year's entry centered around a wool mill, and, keeping with that theme, this year's entry will feature a spice mill.

Now the mills I'm basing these stories on actually exist (Greenbank Mill) or existed (the Fell Spice Mill). However, I'm taking liberties with all sorts of things, not the least of which are time and space. It's nice being master of the universe, you know?

I did learn a lesson last year, and that is to keep each day's writing in a separate file. That should make cobbling them all together into a coherent whole so much easier. I've been flailing about with the wool mill story and haven't settled on how I'm going to beat it into submission. I'm under some pressure here because two people have asked to read it. I've chosen to set aside the worries about "this is just so much crap" and instead focus on dealing with what is and quickly turning it into something I might not be thrilled about others reading but at least won't die of embarrassment after I hand it over to them.

NaNoWriMo turns out not to be scary at all. In fact, I'm entranced by the whole experience. I've heard that writers have had characters just show up and take over the story or found the story shooting off in weird, but unplanned, tangents. I'd never experienced either myself until NaNoWriMo.

The whole point is to just write. The pressure of coming up with 50,000 words in just 30 days is supposed to turn off your internal editor, who thinks that everything you write must be deathless prose. It works. Each day when I sit down to "NaNo," I just close my eyes and start writing. This morning I wrote about a thrilling robbery. Yesterday featured an unexpected comedic bit. Of course, on the first day I killed three people and sent one to an asylum.

See how much fun you can have?

It's not to late to set out on your own NaNo adventure...