NaNoWriMo, Day 1

I'm engaging in National Novel Writing Month. The first question I have to ask myself is this: is it counter-productive to write blog posts when I'm also trying to write 50,000 words of an incipient novel?

The second is this: can I make it all the way through this time?

And the third is this: what am I, crazy?!

This is my third or fourth attempt at NaNo. The other attempts ended within the first 7-10 days. I can write 1666 words a day, no problem. But creatively, while under pressure? Okay, the pressure is self-induced. It's not really a competition; it just feels like one. And if I don't reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, guess what? Most of the other people doing NaNo probably won't either. So there is no external pressure.

In addition, I haven't written creatively in what, a year and a half? And that was only on a novel that I'd written off and on for two years. For perhaps a decade and a half before that, my creative writing endeavors were just so much tumbleweed-strewn desert. Blog posts feel different from fiction. I know they both come out of me, but blog posts are more like conversation. Fiction, now, is work.

I'll report as I feel able throughout the month. If I can find a NaNo widget for the blog, I'll use it so you can see my running word count — LIVE! As for today, I worked for half an hour and wrote 392 words, including title and byline. It was difficult for me, that half an hour and nearly 400 words. I wanted to whip myself along to that 1666-word goal, but I decided to be good to myself instead and celebrate the fact that I wrote for half an hour on a brand new story that is just coming out of my head, no pre-plotting, no backstory other than half a dozen paragraphs of notes. So yay for me! I wrote! However many words I manage to write, I'll write, and I'll celebrate each and every one of them as bringing my creative side back to life. This, my friends, is Me coming back to life. Perhaps, even, my sanity.