It’s that time of year again, ladies and gentlemen: National
Novel Writing Month, the best part about the month of November, at least from
this retail worker’s point of view. This will be my second year doing the race
of words against time and I don’t really know if I’m as excited about it this
year. Last year, I was prepared, outline in hand, ready and raring to go. The
outline was unusual; I never outline, but since it was my first year doing
this, I wanted to be as ready as possible. The outline helped, I guess. While I
followed it, I also ran out of story before I hit 50k and had to add a buttload
of filler. It got me to the end but it also prompted an equally large buttload
of editing, which I’m still going though.
So this year, as a way to prevent restriction, I’m rolling
the way I normally do: seat of the pants, baby. I have three or four ideas,
sequels to last year’s book, and I know which one I’m going with, but I don’t
know. Maybe it’s just nerves because my girlfriend is also participating this
year and I don’t want to completely suck up a storm. I don’t know what it is; I
just haven’t been feeling the NaNoWriMo spirit this year. And yet, even as I
finish up whatever the hell this is, I just updated my word count for the first
time and I’ve written over 1700 words in a little over an hour and a half, so
maybe pantsing is the way to go here.
