Wednesday, October 22, 2008

It's Just a Novel!!


Yes, I may have entirely lost my mind. Let’s be honest here, I don’t exactly have a whole lot of free time on my hands. Between working a full time job, running a youth group practically on my own, teaching ccd classes every few weeks, preparing for an upcoming retreat, trying to keep a household running, figuring out how to work in an exercise routine, having a serious television addiction and attempting to have a social life…it’s no wonder I barely have time to blog lately. Notice I didn’t even mention shoe shopping? Who has time for shoe shopping?

WAIT…WHAT? Scratch that, there’s always time for shoe shopping.

But I digress.

I’m well aware that my blogging has suffered the last several months. I have neglected all three of my blogs, not to mention the various other blogs I make “guest” appearances on here and there, and even worse, I have seriously neglected the blogs I love to visit and read. But, not only have I been entirely too busy, but this new job, as much as I love it, makes blogging a bit difficult. What with all the firewalls and other things, I’m weary of spending too much time online on my work computer.

This is not actually a bad thing, as we’re supposed to WORK at work, right? So, that only leaves my evenings for blog stuff and well…my evenings are pretty crowded lately.

The thing is, that in this new job, I actually have quite a bit of free time. I have my busy moments, but then I do have other times when I literally search for busy work.
It is actually during those times that blog posts such as this one are created, then copy pasted into my blog when I am at home. SHHH…don’t tell.

So then, I decided I would do something productive with my downtimes.

I signed up for
NaNoWriMo again this year. Writing a 50,000 word Novel in the month of November.

Again, yes, I may have entirely lost my mind. But I’m doing it anyway.

Last year I signed up, and I was all gung-ho and excited about it. That is until the big “
meltdown” happened and I lost precious hours…nay…days trying to recover my manuscript. By the time I managed to do so, I had lost my momentum, my motivation and my muse. So, I quit.

I also broke rule #1 of NaNoWriMo last year anyway, because I tried to revive an old manuscript, instead of starting from scratch, which is the entire point behind NaNoWriMo.

So, I’m doing things right this year, and I’m starting from scratch, with a brand new story. One I have yet to dream up, but there are ideas floating around in my head already, pumping themselves up to compete to be the winning entry.

And heck, why not, I’m going to give it a try. What’s the worst that can happen? I don’t reach 50,000 words? Well, at least I’ll have a great start to what could be the next great American novel. Or…whatever.


So, are you doing it? Do you NaNoWriMo?? If so, BUDDY me, let’s keep each other motivated.

3 comments:

Pamela said...

okay... put me on the daily Email list to send me what you wrote so I can read it.
I will keep you honest.

lissa said...

sounds like a good plan, writing doing your down time at work, I added you as a writing buddy, good !

qualcosa di bello said...

i will be one of your cheerleaders!!! i have to pass on all the november writing/blogging stuff due to school & travel.