Nanowrimo & writing status report

Last night C talked me out of doing Nanowrimo this year. That's where you write a "novel" in the month of November. Well, it's 50,0000 words, so it's technically a novella. He pointed out to me that now probably wasn't the best time and I could try to do it next year. That satisfied me.

Now some of you are probably thinking I'm insane since you don't know how I find the time to write anyway. And it's a good thing that I'm married to this man who manages to steer away from the ditch. Then I just realised I can have some of the benefits of a nanowrimo right here by blogging about my writing goals and progress.

As I mentioned, I'm writing another children's picture book. It's called Mya Mya Marionette. The deadline for the contest is October 31, so that's the deadline. I'd like to have it done before then so hopefully it gets there before the deluge. I'm shooting for October 15th to have the final draft ready. Just today I finished the second draft. I think I now have all the scenes I want fleshed out and I think the plot, characters and their motivations are clear, at least to me. So now I need to show it to some folks to see if they understand what's going on. It feels short to me, but then I also don't have an incredibly complex amount of information to convey like I did with Greg. So if you want to read it, please let me know.

I've only written two chapters of my novel, The Road to Mandalay which isn't as much as I'd like. And the chapters are short at 1700 words. I need to have at least 2500 words before my writing workshop at the end of October. That's another reason I need to finish up Mya Mya before the deadline.

My nonfiction book on the other hand is 6800 words, so there's progress there and I don't think it's going to be a long book. I also want to write a book proposal and start submitting it before I finish the book. I would actually rather work on my non-fiction book, but the writing workshop isn't about non-fiction.

Oh, I also wrote a 1200 word short science fiction story "Cascade". I'm taking it to the writing workshop.

Well it was certainly helpful to lay this all out here. I do spend a lot of time with my butt in the chair considering that I have two small children, but I wish my output was higher. I'm not sure if that's realistic considering that two of my books are children's picture books, but it would make me feel better. So after I've finished Mya Mya Marionette, I may try a daily word count with being able to borrow/lend within a week. I'll start low at 250 a day. Oh, and I suppose I should write before I blog. Sorry, people. This is over 500 words right here.

Yes, this was very helpful. I do regularly churn out prose here. But here I just write. I don't feel the need to write beautiful tightly crafted prose. I sit butt in chair. I put fingers to keyboard. I think. I type. I do edit some. But I don't have the pile of voices in my head telling me I should write something else. That it's all crap. That I will somehow horribly offend someone because of something I write. That I must censor myself before the words even reach the keyboard.

Instead I know that at least some of you reading this are my friends who know and like me. And if you aren't my friend, at least you read to the end of this. Thanks. So maybe I should pretend I'm blogging. I guess anyone can always read and put down the book. Hrm.

I think a daily word count is the way to go. Thanks nanowrimo and thanks readers. I just made a breakthrough.