The NaNoWriMo Files Part 1

I do it every year. I say I'm going to do NaNoWriMo because, when you think about it, 50,000 words spread out over 30 days with no self editor filter shouldn't be that hard. I know that I've written more than that in a shorter period of time, it's just words on a page.

But each year I've choked, getting no further than 6,000 words during the first two years and 10,000 words last year. I'm growing, but I'm choking.

This year, I'm having to re-evaluate some things and one of those things is the place writing has in my life. I'm getting paid to write. Everything I write for someone else is for pay. It may not be much, but it's something. I enjoy writing, but I have to train myself to use the pressure.

There is a pretty big group here in my hometown and they love to meet at my favourite little coffee stumping ground. It's a great place to go to write as long as you write. Unlimited coffee (well, limited by how much you want to pay), delicious desserts, and espresso based beverages - and even stuff for the non coffee drinker, like tea and sodas. Whatever you do, you will either be on a caffeine high or a sugar high so that you can get those daily word counts.

I thought about doing a daily word count, but I looked at my weekly schedule, which changes each week and from Monday - Wednesday, I'm working from 8am -10pm with two of my jobs and I decided to go by the weekly word count instead. I'm going to be so tired and I won't be able to get as much done on some days as I will on others, like this Thursday, on which I have a half day free) and Friday, which I took off completely. If NaNo started today, I could get my weekly word count on those two days and during the weekend.

So what am I looking at here? I have to write 1,667 words a day, 12,500 words a week. The daily count doesn't seem daunting. It's the weekly count that's doing it. This year, I'm doing something a bit different, creating a pre-writing outline. I have a couple of stories that could make the cut, but only if they look real pretty in their outline format. I like a good profile. Anyway, bad humour aside, I'm pretty excited about it, again, this year. I feel like I could really make it to the end of the month with 50,000 words of a story written out.

But I want to write for television, which, although it doesn't preclude being a novelist, does seem to ask why I push myself to do this. The simple answer is to accomplish some writing feat that I haven't accomplished before. The second simple answer is that all the ideas are original spec ideas and so if I can flesh out a good story with any of these ideas, I can put together a good script. And by the time I get to 30 days, the hardest part of writing my own original spec will be done. It's not rocket science, but it will take determination and I've got plenty of that.