I started the National Novel Writing Month on the first. I started with one idea and then went off and did something totally different. I am satisfied with what I’m writing about though so I don’t feel as if I shafted myself.
What I’ve been slacking off on is the discipline to sit down and write for a long period of time. I find myself tweeting instead or updating my word count every five hundred words or minutes. Talk about distraction!
Amidst the distraction and lack of focus, I have been constantly thinking about writing, planning my social gatherings around enough time to write, and meeting folks (online and in real time) who are writers! I am aligned with the universe in my passion, which is a fantastic thing.
When I do sit down to put words on the page, there’s an acute attention and concentration that takes control as my hands fly across the keyboard; I’m in the zone, the story is taking itself somewhere I didn’t expect, and my characters are really talking to each other. It’s an amazing feeling.
I mostly have this concentration when I’m doing NaNoWriMo though; when I’m writing a short story, the creation is already written down on the page and being transcribed onto my laptop. There’s a different energy when I’m typing versus when I’m writing. When I have a pen in hand and I’m writing from a prompt, my creative juices are flowing, my mind is churning, and I’m putting everything down on paper to make sense of things later. With this contest, I’m doing the same thing but the accomplishment is greater because it’s a novel, not a short story or prompt.
I love NaNoWriMo. I wish I could have this kind of discipline with all my writing year round. Maybe this time, I’ll carry this with me for years to come.
