The local reading I signed up for, I got into. I'm not terribly nervous -- it's a ten minute read, and I'm more worried about falling asleep during the other readings and looking like an asshole. Because, let's face it, I'm not much into historical fiction or contemporary Midwest settings full of wild rice and prairies.
I started a new YA novel venture. I'm not sure if it will end up being for a YA audience, but I'm trying. As far as I know, the only firm-standing qualification for YA fiction is the main character(s) have to be teenagers. It's basically "Stand By Me" with dwarfs. Girl dwarfs.
Ahem.
Anyway, it's what I'm writing during the non-lunch hour periods where I'm working on revising Defender (white mage story). The problem is my own mind has betrayed me. Instead of writing the book, my mind has decided its going to be distracted by Candy Crush Saga and clips of Conan O'Brien. Write a novel? No, I'm scared I won't be good enough. Once it's transformed into text, my perfect idea ceases to be perfect. Happens every novel, but since I'm not writing this in a neatly sectioned allotment of time, the distractions of the Internet are strong.
So, in order to combat this, I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time. I got the inspiration from a post by Rainbow Rowell (author of Eleanor & Park) who said that Fangirl was written from it -- she had trouble sitting her butt down and writing too for that novel.
The timing is right, the word count is about right -- my goal-ish is 50,000 words, about right for YA, but I'm not concerned about making a word count. I'm more concerned about word count per day. If I have eighteen scenes architected, averaging around 3,000 words per scene, that's 54,000 total words. Divided by 30 days, means a 1800 word count. However, I don't plan to write on the weekends, so I'll just worry about weekdays. If I can maintain an 1800 word count per day, that's 75% done anyway, and then I'm sure I'll finish. It's getting started and maintaining the chain that's the hard part.
NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, so I'll expect to see everyone here at 7:30 sharp.Labels: NaNoWriMo, Stand By Me with Dwarves
