Nanowrimo challenge!!! And encouragement!

Okay, taking a little break from NaNoWriMo this morning to try and encourage a little.

Writing is hard work, and it can be even harder to write without editing. If you’re going to succeed in the NaNoWriMo challenge you have to push that side of your brain away, lock it in a room, and hide the key. Kind of like when you do a brainstorm session and everyone throws out whatever comes to mind. You don’t laugh; you just write it down and move on.

I’ve talked to several people about this challenge and one person said there was no way they could do it without going nuts. I know what that feels like, I write using Word, and it always highlights my mistakes, which is great, and truth be told I try and fix the easy ones because those red underlined words drive me nuts. Here’s my only real advice, just try, and keep trying. Don’t stop, keep writing even if it’s horrible. Red lines, bad grammar, misspelled words be damned, write your heart out.

My biggest problem so far is that I have a great outline, but a key plot point just wasn’t there yet. I wrote the first thing that came to mind, and it SUCKED. What was I going to do, this was a major point in the story which drives us to the third act. It was a little over 800 words, but I deleted and wrote just about another 800 words to take their place. Guess what, it wasn’t the greatest either. So at least within NaNoWriMo, just keep going, don’t delete. I thought about just skipping to the next main section in my outline, which is what I should have done.

Anyway, I’d just like to encourage you. Keep writing, keep plugging along, and if it sucks, who cares, but if you come up with something brilliant, publish it and then we all win.

I play guitar, and heard some many of my friends’ say, “I wish I would have learned to play.” I say, “Well you’re not dead yet, you still can.” So if you ever wanted to write, no matter how old, or young you are, just do it.

 Grab your computer, a piece of paper, or chalk for cheese sake, and write.

The first book I read that helped a bunch was, A Complete Idiots Guide to Writing a Novel, it was awesome and helped out a lot, go get it, and write.