0 Writing With Abandon (An IWSG Post)

The first Wednesday of each month is devoted to The Insecure Writer's Support Group in which writers everywhere can voice whatever worries they have and receive some words of encouragement in return from those who have been there and done that. It was started by the Ninja captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh, himself and has done so well that it now has its very own website and Facebook page. Click on the above link for more information and a complete list of participants...

So, like many writers around the world (280,977 according to their site), I am participating in NaNoWriMo this month. If you're unfamiliar with it, the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. That's an average of 1,667 words a day. It can be occasionally insane. Well, at least the way I do it. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Anyway, I do it because despite the (occasional) insanity, it's ultimately fun. It's ultimately exhilarating (especially when you do hit the finish line on time), and at the end of it, I have a brand new story. Sure, the 50,000 words never seem to include an ending. Or a proper beginning. Or the vast majority of the middle (wait...what the hell am I doing with these 50,000 words??), but I still have a story.

And the best part is, I even like it. The story, I mean. You know, in addition to having had written it.

One of the NaNoWriMo taglines is "Write With Abandon" and it's a philosophy I want to carry with me into December and every month after because I'm realizing more and more that it's a good one. A lot of the time I think I get too bogged down with trying to make a first draft a perfect draft, and for whatever reason, I let myself off the hook in November.

Maybe it's because in NaNos past, I've used those thirty days to experiment in genres in which I normally wouldn't write or haven't written. So maybe subconsciously, I feel there's nothing to be lost, so why not go for it?

Or maybe it's because I'm a complicated freak. But that's a post for another time.

This year, I'm a NaNo Rebel and am working not on a brand new novel, but rather striving to add 50,000 new words to my current WIP, Second Nature. And I have found myself itching to hit that delete button and wipe out entire sentences, paragraphs, and even scenes because I don't feel they're good enough. But what I should be thinking is that they're not good enough yet.

The following Nora Roberts quote kind of sums it up perfectly for me:

So even though I'm somehow perpetually 2,000 words behind the daily target, and am missing huge chunks of plot, and actually have a character named "Mercenary Guy" because I haven't gotten around to giving him a proper name or, you know, anything else (though I suspect he may be a mercenary...) yet, I'm having a blast. There is some really horrible prose to be found on these pages, but it's getting easier to accept that and move on. Even with all that moving on, I may fall well short of the 50,000 words in 30 days goal (according to my stats page, I won't be finished until December 12th), but I'm enjoying the journey.

And that's what really matters.

Here's hoping I can keep that going all year round.

Happy writing, all.