NaNoWriMo 2k22: Weekly Update #1
Hey y’all,
Like I said last week, November is National Novel Writing Month—often shortened to ‘NaNoWriMo.’ If you want to know more about what that is, have a look here. If you want to make a tax deductible donation to the organization, you can do that here. If you want to support me this month as I write a new novel, you can upgrade to a paid subscription and/or buy a copy of my very first novel here. Lastly, should you want to read said first novel, Everything Fails: A Science Fictional Memoir—which I wrote during NaNoWriMo in 2013—you can do so for free on Ello by starting here and following the navigation at the bottom of each page.
So, as you may recall from last time or perhaps you are learning for the first time today, the basic goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in 30 days or less. I added a few extra guidelines for myself this time out. Here are those, as well as an update on each has been going:
No checking word count.
I have totally stuck to this and have not even been tempted to look … and it’s going great! I feel very good about the writing and am not concerned in the least about word count. So far, so good!
Minimal planning and preparation.
Check! I started the book with the basic idea of the ‘backbone’ structure and that has slowly refined into a sort of primer-style narrative of how to read the book specifically, and my work in general. Very pleased with this development so far.
Revise as I go.
In the next day or so, I need to give the whole work a read through and tighten it up. I’ve mostly been doing line edits for typos and a very spot checks for phrasing here and there—which is in keeping with this objective, but I want to do a closer read-through every so often.
Stop while I still know what’s coming next.
This one has been okay. See the next one for more information.
Do not plan more than a page or two ahead (optional).
Soooo I would say, yes, I have been doing this. But maybe not planning quite enough? I don’t know. Part of how I’ve had good momentum is by not worrying too much about what’s happening or what is coming next. But having written over twenty novels, I know from experience that this can really bite in week 2. So it might be worth mapping out a little bit. I can always go off map later if I want. It’s an optional provision I set for myself anyway.
No writing meetups.
Again: Covid is real. Nine hundred thirty thousand confirmed deaths in the US in the last week. The flu and pneumonia are real. Everyone I know is getting sick from something. To the credit of the local NaNoWriMo meetups, they have been doing them masked, which I applaud in this who-gives-a-shit-about-anything-anymore atmosphere we find ourselves in—at least in the States. Don’t know what it is like elsewhere. Please update us in the comments, if you’d like. Anyway, all that’s to say, no problem here. No meetups, no feeling like I want to.
No skipping days.
As I mentioned last week, it was a soft tradition (at times bordering on superstition) of mine to skip the second day of writing, but I did not do that this year. Haven’t missed a day, and don’t plan to. So far, so good.
No voluntary travel.
No problem this week. No involuntary travel, either, which is a nice bit of luck.
I will donate to NaNoWriMo.
Yep, right away. And as I’ve said, you can, too, right here.
Use tarot and other cards as needed.
I have done a single draw of three cards that I planed to use a couple days ago, but haven’t yet. It’s the mix, though. But I haven’t really felt too much of a pull toward them this week.
Overall, I’d say I’m doing well physically and mentally. Writing a novel in a month is a kind of emotional marathon, and you really have to pace yourself and take good care or you will quit or go a little bananas. So I’m doing okay! No more bonkers than usual. Sleeping okay. Eating all right. Taking walks and spending time with friends and family. Working full-time. Doing the Oxford reading list. That is going predictably slowly and that is okay. If I finish either King Lear or Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter's Album by the end of the month, I will be delighted. I’m also reading Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why. He’s kind of a shithead, and I hate almost all of his opinions about fiction and criticism, but his reading guidance is somewhat useful. I doubt I will read anything else by him after this, and I would not recommend this book to anyone. Instead, try Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. It’s much better.
Oh, and my oldest is running me through their first Dungeons & Dragons campaign and that’s going quite well. They’re kind of a natural. I’ll write more about that and D&D in general in December.
That’s it for this week. If you want to cheer me on or tell me what you think of the book, please do so in the comments! If you’re all like, What book, T? Where is it? It’s called Teresa’s Backbone, and I’m publishing it right here on Substack. You can read it here. Listings are in reverse order cos that’s how Substack do. I will try to create a directory for it and pin that to the top some time this week. Oh! And I think I’m going to drop the ‘day whatever’ subtitle. It’s getting too constricting. Let me know if that is a good or bad idea, if you have an opinion about it.
Okay! That’s it for realsies! See ya next week or in the comments.
Xoxo,
T
