NaNo Rejuvenation

I've been lagging behind in NaNo. This is understandable, considering it's the middle of the semester and November began with a history-making election.

(Hell yes Obama won! I feel like it's ok to hope again.)

And so my mind has been on other things. Clearly. I've been working hard with MPIRG to get out the vote, I've been keeping up with schoolwork (I have As in all of my classes), and I switched novel ideas just before November started. I've literally been starting from scratch, with three characters and a semblance of plot.

As of right now, the word count is at 1718. Considering how busy I've been, that's miraculous.

But it's not nearly where I should be to sit pretty.

Then I opened my email this morning and read Jonathan Stroud's pep talk. And I remembered why I'm doing NaNo. Because writing a novel will always be painful in some way - there isn't time to make it perfect, like you would with a poem. It's a HUGE quantity of writing, and the real writing is in the editing. The novel that I've been working on since this summer (the one I'm not doing for NaNo), was starting to make me question my ability because it isn't perfect or good, and so I took a break from it to do NaNo. And after NaNo, I can return to it with a new vigor, knowing that the first draft is the real trick.

So I'm writing a novel in a month.

I need to write my way up to 6666 words today to catch up, and I will. Even if I don't get that much sleep tonight. It's worth it.

And hopefully soon I'll have a werewolf play-list for noveling! That will be quite exciting.