Dave Goodman
The NaNoWriMo Dialogues
I’m rather enjoying Chuck Wendig’s NaNoWriMo Dialogues, a series of posts where he talks to an imaginary NaNoWriMo-ite about the challenges of trying to get 50,000 words written in 30 days.
Here’s posts One, Two, Three, Four and Five so far.
I ‘won’ NaNoWriMo back in 2005, when I was also living in hotels four days a week in a demanding job. It was pretty fun and gave me the first serious chunk of writing that I’d completed since I was eighteen or so (the longest before that was a terrible 16,000 word space opera that will never, ever see the light of day).
NaNoWriMo didn’t give me anything I’ll probably ever try to submit. But it showed me that I was capable of a certain amount of creative output and has been a real touchstone since as I’ve come back to writing regularly. If I was able to write 1,667 words a day for a month when I was working the hours I did back then, then a thousand words a day now is totally manageable.
Also, if you’re at all interested in writing genre fiction (or even just really like reading it and are curious about the creative process) and you’re not following Chuck’s blog, do yourself a favour and subscribe.