10/28/10

The NaNoWriMo Quandary

By the way, Sara B. Larson officially has 200 followers! I don't know who Emy Shin (the 200th follower) is, but she kinda made me happy! :)

I'm in a quandary: NaNoWriMo is only a few days away.

It's not that I don't have a plot or a plan, though I don't. (I wasn't planning on having either for this month of rambunctious, rule-less writing fun!) It's not even that I don't have an idea, though I don't. (Though the bliss of "I-have-to-write-this-story-or-I-shall-die-as-all-the-words-are-packed-like-sardines-in-my-head" feeling has sadly deserted me.)

It's that I really should be revising. My new beta reader, Shelley, has given me some extremely helpful advice. (Note: extremely helpful = "Darn, you noticed that! I was hoping no one would" revelations as well as completely new stuff that I'm very glad she made me aware of.) I'm so veryveryvery thankful for her! She. Is. Awesome.

And I should really start putting her notes into practice. Also known as: revisions.

Fact #1: I'm not really excited about revisions. At all.
Fact #2: I was very excited about the idea of writing with no rules and no deadlines and no intention of publication (though that could happen, you never know).

Fact #1 + Fact #2 = Quandary. What to do with my November?

It's the old should do vs. want to do conundrum, except, in my case, I have an entire year of "should do" writing behind me. I'm ready for some "want to do," man!

Yeah, I could do both. I feasibly and conceivably could. (Probably will.)

(Then there's the whole "Which Story Do I Write?" quandary, which is the subject of a future post, I'm sure.)

But right now, well...
HELP!!!!!!
Advice? I really want to do NaNoWriMo the way it was designed...for writing...but, as you can see, I'm in a quandary...

2 comments:

Creepy Query Girl said...

I'm def in no position to attempt NaNoWriMo. I'm still recovering from my mad scramble to finish my first draft before going back to work. I barely made it through revision hell and now I'm in query hell. So I'm trying to relax and catch up on some reading. As for revisions, I did a bunch of series on my process which was taken from a myriad of places and I have to say...revision went by a lot faster and a lot cleaner than it ever has before for me so maybe it will help you too. In my side bar, you can go under 'revision' and the posts should show up.

Shelley Sly said...

Awww YOU are awesome!! You gave me incredibly valuable advice on my own MS! :)

I'm not doing NaNo because I want to focus on editing the one manuscript and eventually starting another, but everyone works differently. If you think you can handle NaNo, I encourage you to try!