They Call me a Pantser
For the second year in a row, I am tackling the monumentally crazy challenge that is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.
On October 1st I decided I wanted to give it another try, then around the 20th, I signed in to my account. Last night right in the middle of trick-or-treating I made a mental note to get started, and then while dropping the kids off at school this morning I thought, “Oh shit, I have to write 1700 words today!”
The cool kids in the NaNoWriMo world would call this “pantsing,” as in flying by the seat of your pants. So while I have a few ideas knocking around in my head, basically I’m starting cold.
Last year I wrote a whopping 5,510 out of the 50,000 words you need to write to be considered a “winner.” I won’t be a winner this year either, but I’m showing up anyway.
If I learned anything in the last year its that my writing is not precious.
The whole point of doing something like this is to silence your inner-editor. Stop treating your creativity like a toy you think will be worth a million dollars one day. You’ve got to rip that box open and play with NOW because now is when it matters. Now is when it’s fun!
See. Even Adele agrees with me.
What I Really Want to Say Is…
This year I’m titling my collection of essays and blog posts What I Really Want to Say Is…
It’s a tip I picked up from Kathleen Shannon. She’s one of those creative types that has a bunch of really cool job titles like, branding expert, podcaster, speaker, author, and general badass. Anyway, she says when she is facing some sort of creative block she starts with, “What I really want to say is…” I’ve used this to jump-start many of my blog posts.
I often dance around a subject because I’m afraid to be direct and flowery complicated sentences like the one I’m writing right now give me something to hide behind in case you don’t like what I have to say.
Day 1
Today went nothing like it was supposed to. Murphy, being the asshole that he is, means my middle daughter came home from school sick. The 90 minutes of uninterrupted time I had set aside to write has been turned into short bursts at the computer in between getting snacks and popsicles and asking her if she needs to barf or poop.
So here goes… Day 1 is in the books and I have over 400 words to show for it.
I hope you’ll follow along. xoxo
