Oh Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear!

It's November 1, the first day of National Novel Writing Month, and the first day of National Blog Posting Month. Oh dear, what have I got myself into?

I had meant to have had my first post written quite early this morning, and I was planning on writing the first 1600 words of my November Novel (which I'm calling "Nov Nov" {get it?... get it?!} as a working title, since it doesn't have a title yet) well before this evening, but I still had the remnants this morning of a two-day headache. Only in the past hour has it subsided enough to think, let alone write.

And as for this blog post, I have no idea what to write about!

Oh, wait, yes I do. Or at least I know one thing I want to write about. In the welcome email from NaNoWriMo there were three bits of advice that I thought were very well done, so I'm going to share them here. The first one told us that it is okay to not know what we're doing: "Write every day, and a book-worthy story will appear even if you're not sure what that story might be right now."

The second bit of advice is worth completely quoting here: "Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even it it's hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn't. Every book you've ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you." I would like to know how they know my inner editor so well!

And their third piece of advice is to tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November because "This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. . . The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse."

There was an addendum to #3, and that was that though there will be times we'll want to quit we must stick it out and see it through. "Week Two can be hard. Week Three is much better. Week Four will make you want to yodel. And we're talking the good kind of yodeling here."

Cool, huh?

Martha is participating in NaBlo this month, and Mara is participating in NaNo, so I have some old J-Land friends to keep me company -- and it's good company at that! So please drop by to give them some support and encouragement.

Well, gotta go for now. Nov-Nov is waiting for me!

P.S. Just found out that Betty and Rose are participating in NaBlo too, so please stop by and check out their posts this month.