NaNoWrMo Update – Not Gonna Happen

A brief update on my progress with National Novel Writing Month….

Yeah, about that… I can probably say, with absolute certainty, that I’m most definitely NOT going to make the 50,000 word count by the end of November. As evidenced by the first three days, which included the weekend, my real life schedule just won’t allow for a novel to be written in that amount of time. Even if I gave up going to the gym, doing my dishes, laundry, and seeing any member of my family or friends, I have to work overtime and just getting to and from work eats up precious writing moments. Trust me, I’ve tried writing on the bus, but then I can’t read my own handwriting and all the ideas are gone.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up! No, I intend to keep writing, but the goal now is to get as far as I can in the span of time left to me. Granted, when I get on a tear, it feels like I’m catching up. But then I notice it’s almost one in the morning and I have to be up and ready for work in four hours. This creates a vicious cycle of tiredness, lethargy, eureka moments, and so forth. So it’s best that I don’t see this month with the goal in mind of finishing a first draft, but getting as close as I possibly can.

I’m not gonna lie, it’s hard to admit defeat so soon because I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to setting a lot of goals for myself and beating myself up when I don’t meet them. I promise not to actually beat myself up. But I’m getting a stern talking to about time management and “realistic goals” come December. Boy am I gonna get it!

All joking aside, I’m not out of the game yet, I’ve just changed the parameters. By the end of November, I’ll be a step closer to completing a novel, which is the closest I’ve ever been to even writing a novel. Win-win, really.

NaNoWrMo Begins

And so it begins! November is National Novel Writing Month and yours truly is all signed up to experience the emotional roller coaster of trying to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Will I make? Will I get remotely close? Will I inevitably spend hours staring at a blank screen while my mind cries out, “Write something, damn you!”? I’d say all of the above are possible. So, of course, I’d want to share my pain with all of you.

Throughout the month of November I’ll regularly be checking in with updates on my progress and maybe dropping some tidbits about the potential manuscript in question. What I can reveal to you at this time is that it’s called The Quest Thief, a fantasy adventure. A thief steals a quest and gets roped into completing the quest with its original adventuring hero. Hilarity, action, and drama ensue. But that’s all you get for now!

In honor of the genre I’ll be writing, I intend to devote at least one article a week to looking at some aspect of the fantasy genre through a particular movie, novel, television show, or comic book. Though high fantasy has gotten quite the resurgence in the last decade, the fantasy genre is just as complex and complicated as science fiction, westerns, and mysteries. Hopefully I’ll be able to add something of my own to those book shelves.