NaNoWriMo starts this weekend! YAY!
With all of the emotional crap I’m dealing with in my personal life, I’m seriously looking forward to diving into an alternate reality for a while. This is the first year that I won’t be in the middle of a move, so there are *no* excuses to not participate.
I had a funny epiphany, though.I did a word count on half a dozen of my blog posts. In a little 30-45 minute jot, I often write up between 600-1000 words. That’s just by rambling into the aether!
With this event, though, I’ll be able to focus that pouring of words toward a story (which I should’ve already been doing, but I’m lazy and have bad habits). I don’t think I’ll have any issues, since I’m only looking at the length of two blog posts per day; considering the prep I’ve done, I’m sure that’ll be easy!
Speaking of prep, I still have bits I want to do. I’ve researched and built a nice little world, but I want to get a vague, one-page outline of my story (or at least one character’s arch) written out before Saturday. I’ve bounced between ideas, from a story of self-discovery to a story of two unlikely people becoming friends (corny, but it has more depth in context).
Another piece of random prep is creating a calendar. I want a physical one for my bedroom door, so I can mark off my word counts daily (and weekly) to be sure I’m on track. I’m in a mood right now where step-by-step processes are my jam. I saw a few interesting calendars online via DeviantArt, but I think I’d rather do my own and add quotes and junk. I’ll probably make it tomorrow during lunch, just to be sure it gets done before we start writing.
Of things I’ve managed to nail down for my story, I can say… I’m going to write something in third-person. It’ll probably be third-person limited, which is basically third-person from a specific person’s perspective, allowing you to keep stuff from the reader because an observer following your main character wouldn’t have been informed or witnessed your secret thing. It’s used in a ton of the books I’ve enjoyed reading, and it’s more relatable than first person for many of the people I know. It’s really hard for a male to get into the head of a female protagonist if she’s first-person (and visa versa); meanwhile, it’s relatively easy to step out of oneself and become an observer of the opposite sex without that sense of disconnect.
I’m annoyingly excited for the end of this week (and it’s only Monday).
Note: I’m snickering at myself, because I said the average length of my blog posts… and then wrote one far shorter (489 words) in about 20 minutes. I still stand by my logic, though, that it’s like blogging on a small dose of steroids.
Larissa Lee 