NaNoWriMo??

The only consistent thing in my life as an AuDHD-er is how inconsistent I am… And the irony isn’t lost on me. I’ve thought about writing a blog post for a while now, but every time I sat down I couldn’t think of anything to write… so I didn’t. There hasn’t really been much going on (I say that, but tons is going on). I’m still on pause waiting to hear back from my editor about the first book in my trilogy. All five of my WIP’s are still WIP’s. And I’m struggling with, what I believe is, the last scene (or two) of the novella I’ve been posting to Wattpad (11 parts posted thus far, though, so go me!).

Book 2 is on pause for at least 3-4 months, which seems to be the unwritten consensus on how long to wait before looking at a draft again with “fresh eyes.” So the only thing left to do is move on, I guess? I’ve been tossing around the idea of joining NaNoWriMo this year for a while (Since Spring, when I finally wrote the last scenes of book 2). I haven’t participated since 2018, and haven’t won since 2015. So I figured, what the heck, why not use NaNo as an excuse to get me started on book 3, the final book in my trilogy, and literally 10 years in the making, haha.

Since I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, I’ve had a lot of time to prepare, both mentally and writerly. I haven’t decided if I want to try and win, although it always feels like a nice accomplishment. What I’m really hoping is that it will motivate me to consistently write for the entire month, even if it’s just 100 words a day. I did that in 2018, and managed to write 33,000 words that month. Impressive to me at the time, considering I was in the middle of my creative burnout.

I’ve officially signed up, and I have a rough timeline of events. I just need to figure out the first scene to write, and whose POV it’ll be from. I’ve got a little under 2 weeks to figure it out. And at the very least, if there’s one thing NaNoWriMo is good at, it’s giving myself permission to write poorly. And what I mean by that is, not get caught up in having the first rendition be a more polished rendition. Instead of freezing at how to perfectly phrase everything from the get go, and never getting the scene out, I can categorically choose to just write poorly for the word count, and then at least my scene is on the page. And once a scene is on the page, it can be edited.

To quote Shannon Hale, “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”

~ Kat

P.S. If you are also doing NaNoWriMo and want to add me, my handle is Amara262.