Wednesday, October 6, 2010

New icon

The new picture next to my blog intro says it all: I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Obviously I love to write--I couldn't possibly keep this blog going if I didn't--and I don't know a single person who hasn't thought, at least once in his life, "I wish I could quit my job and write novels for a living." God knows I've thought that often enough.

Alas, I've also been writing long enough to know that the transition of an idea to the paper (or, in this day and age, the screen) doesn't always go smoothly, and some days it just doesn't go at all. I've also realized that I have little to no imagination when it comes to story ideas and story lines--I have maybe one or two really good ideas a year, and they keep me happily, or not-so-happily, occupied for the rest of the year.

All of which goes to say, that for me to undertake NaNoWriMo--when the longest thing I've written in the past year (not for work) was 3,000 words--is an incredible leap of faith in my ability to pull something out of my @$$ and that it will stick. It's more than a little like my decision to move to the Netherlands, undertaken without a lot of thought, and more than a little faith that my sanity would still be intact at the end of the day. Or, in this case, 3 years. So far, things have worked out.

Here's hoping the same will be true of my book...

4 comments:

  1. From someone who truly enjoys writing, I wish you the best of luck! :)

    That IS a leap of faith but it's the fact that you're trying that counts for everything.

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  2. Thanks! I'll probably make a few "ARGH WHY DID I LET DAN TALK ME INTO THIS" about the writing process in November...

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  3. Every year I mean to take part in NaNoWriMo and every year I find an excuse. Although this year I have a good one. I don't think my soon to be wife would like it if I spent the whole of our honeymoon writing.

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  4. @ Stu: all right, we'll forgive you this year. But only if you pinky-triple-swear to do April Script Madness :-D

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