Sunday, November 18, 2007

The Ease of Writing with a Deadline

Well, this NaNoWriMo thing has really taught me a lot about how I write. I do quite well with a deadline. Now, I've tried to impose a deadline on myself before, but it just never seems real and it never works as one. I write as it strikes me or when it's convenient and I'm struggling with the story, or I write to avoid cleaning my house. Well, sometimes at least.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to write 50K words in thirty days, but if others could do it I figured I could at least try. Maybe. Well, it's the 18th of the month and I've passed the 43K word mark. And more importantly, I still have plenty of story struggling to get out. If I could have just ditched life for the month I could probably write 150K words, but that's just not possible. I'm a wife and mother and I have other responsibilities that keep me from vanishing completely behind a computer screen.

Fortunately, some of those responsibilities have actually given me huge lots of time to write, uninterrupted even. For example, one son had an event to attend the other night. We needed to drop him off before seven that evening and then pick him up around ten, of course, the ten turned into eleven, but hey, I didn't mind, my laptop batteries were still going strong! It's the real reason my word count is so high for Saturday, I actually wrote on Friday evening. Saturday was too busy with cleaning up and holding a birthday party for my eight year old. See, I can write and do the other stuff, really!

I've also learned that teaming up with other writers isn't as futile a thing as I had first imagined. Keep in mind I know no one nearby that writes. None of my friends do, though several of them are voracious readers when they get the chance. Well, I knew no one, now I have a few new friends. I found the local area forum on the NaNo website and then met with some other local writers. We chatted a bit, but for the most part, our time was spent typing into our respective machines. There was a nice comfortable feeling to the gorup and it really helped me stayed focused on writing. I hadn't really expected that. Surprise. I recommend finding other writers and just hanging out for an hour, two, or however long you have and writing together, it can really be a good experience.

1 comment:

Jennifer Shirk said...

Yes, I agree. It's really nice to hang out with other writers online. :)

I belong to a couple of forums myself. Otherwise, writing can get quite lonely.