It's NaPoWriMo Time!
Hmmmm. I fell off the face of the Earth, so far as LiveJournal is concerned. Probably because I got a rather horrendous cold just as March began. In March, the local writers' group to which I belong decided to hold a novel-writing challenge similar to NaNoWriMo, because many of our members couldn't do it in November. I was going to finish the novel I wrote (and nearly finished) for NaNoWriMo. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to write the novel that came before that one. So I started that novel for our challenge, which we called CaNoWriMo.
CaNoWriMo got what I considered a rocky start for me, as I had the above-mentioned cold, and then a different virus piggy-backed itself onto the end, so I was miserable for nearly three weeks. I slogged through my required word count (I just used the 1667 words per day, even though March has 31 days and November only 30). I reached the "this novel is crap" feeling somewhere in the first 20,000 words, and the slogging became even slower.
Then two things happened. I had a conceptual breakthrough, and got over the virus so I wasn't trying to think through glue.
Every night as I went to bed, I took my notebook in and sat up for--well, as long as it took--and brainstormed about the next day's writing. I wrote down stuff I had forgotten to put in the text as I wrote. I figured out lists of plot points. I decided where chapters should end. I realized that I had been treating NaNoWriMo (and thus CaNoWriMo) as if I had to write by the seat of my pants. I've always been an outline writer, not a discovery writer, and my work was suffering, spinning its wheels, becoming full of talking heads, because I was thrashing about in the novel trying to figure out what to do next. Once I started doing that in my notebook before I went to sleep, the writing the next day went much more smoothly, and my productivity went up. Oh, and one other thing. I had been acting as if I had no time to research as I wrote. Again, productivity suffered because I really wanted to do some research! So I started allowing myself to do research. Since I really enjoy research, it truly was a reward to me. Oh, the cool resources I discovered! Perhaps I'll talk about them in another post.
So, I finished CaNoWriMo with over 60,000 words and a novel about half done. But I am still enthusiastic to continue with it! I hope I can keep up the enthusiasm and actually finish during April. But it will be even more of a challenge because (and now I finally get to what the subject of this post is all about), April is National Poetry Writing Month. I enjoyed NaPoWriMo so much last year that I knew I had to do it this year, too.
I'm not a true poet--I'll be the first to admit that. The true poet seems to be driven to write poetry. I write it because it's fun or interesting, and mostly for the challenge. So I will be splitting my writing energies in April between a poem a day and finishing the novel. So far, so good. I finished a poem already today, and I'm working on the novel (or was, until I suddenly decided to blog).
Wish me luck.
Because in May, I'll be doing Story a Day again.
CaNoWriMo got what I considered a rocky start for me, as I had the above-mentioned cold, and then a different virus piggy-backed itself onto the end, so I was miserable for nearly three weeks. I slogged through my required word count (I just used the 1667 words per day, even though March has 31 days and November only 30). I reached the "this novel is crap" feeling somewhere in the first 20,000 words, and the slogging became even slower.
Then two things happened. I had a conceptual breakthrough, and got over the virus so I wasn't trying to think through glue.
Every night as I went to bed, I took my notebook in and sat up for--well, as long as it took--and brainstormed about the next day's writing. I wrote down stuff I had forgotten to put in the text as I wrote. I figured out lists of plot points. I decided where chapters should end. I realized that I had been treating NaNoWriMo (and thus CaNoWriMo) as if I had to write by the seat of my pants. I've always been an outline writer, not a discovery writer, and my work was suffering, spinning its wheels, becoming full of talking heads, because I was thrashing about in the novel trying to figure out what to do next. Once I started doing that in my notebook before I went to sleep, the writing the next day went much more smoothly, and my productivity went up. Oh, and one other thing. I had been acting as if I had no time to research as I wrote. Again, productivity suffered because I really wanted to do some research! So I started allowing myself to do research. Since I really enjoy research, it truly was a reward to me. Oh, the cool resources I discovered! Perhaps I'll talk about them in another post.
So, I finished CaNoWriMo with over 60,000 words and a novel about half done. But I am still enthusiastic to continue with it! I hope I can keep up the enthusiasm and actually finish during April. But it will be even more of a challenge because (and now I finally get to what the subject of this post is all about), April is National Poetry Writing Month. I enjoyed NaPoWriMo so much last year that I knew I had to do it this year, too.
I'm not a true poet--I'll be the first to admit that. The true poet seems to be driven to write poetry. I write it because it's fun or interesting, and mostly for the challenge. So I will be splitting my writing energies in April between a poem a day and finishing the novel. So far, so good. I finished a poem already today, and I'm working on the novel (or was, until I suddenly decided to blog).
Wish me luck.
Because in May, I'll be doing Story a Day again.