NaNoWriMo Day 1: A Slow Start

WRITING SOUNDTRACK: A LOVE SUPREME – JOHN COLTRANE

I don’t feel too bad: 134 is far from the goal of 1666-7 words. But that’s fine, because this is supposed to be fun. What I have learned is that analysis paralysis and the harridan editor, those forces combine in my world to create writer’s block to kill my fun quicker than a bug zapper.

On my hard drive (MacBook Pro!), there are unfinished stories: two what could be novels, and an assortment of short stories that began as creative writing exercises. I thought that I’d choose one of the short stories, all which have existing dialogue which is verboten in the NaNoWriMo rules. I know that all of these stories have great potential, but as I re-read them I knew that I couldn’t work with them without using the existing dialogue. Now, I know that a writer should never fall in love with their own words, but I just couldn’t imagine a new ways to describe setting or the emotional states of my Carlene, Joseph/Josephina, Rachel and Dillon. So I re-read the F.A.Q. and accepted this advice:

Give yourself the gift of a clean slate, and you’ll tap into realms of imagination and intuition

At 23:35 (11:35 p.m.) I opened Pages and stared at the screen. Relax. In time my fingers moved from key to key and three new characters were born: the Sweets Lady, Trill and Bounder. All I know about them so far is that the Sweets Lady is troubled, Trill is lonely and Bounder is a happy greyhound. The rule that I must follow for the rest of November is to not think too much, just let the writing flow.

Technical note: It wasn’t until after midnight that I entered the word count. Accessing the NaNoWriMo site has been difficult all day: slow and server resets. What this means is that the Progress Chart is incorrect. But that really doesn’t matter because I only wrote 134 words which will be part of the 02 November. A small matter.