It's that time of the year once again, folks. NaNoWriMo, National November Writer's Month. The deal is that during a grueling month of writing you attempt to complete a novel (or reach 50k words). There's a site, t-shirts, group events, and more. But none of that shit can save you once you commit.
Last year I gave it a try with a story I shared here on Steemit about a generation ship in space. It was called Generation Alpha Centauri and I got a good ways into it but fell short of the full 50k by more than 25k. The year before that I completed the challenge, wondering if I would ever decide to do something that insane, again.
The quality of the book isn't an issue. The issue is a promise that you make to yourself: I will complete my 50k words no matter what! And then each day you do your 2500 words or so (you technically only need to do 1666, but I can tell you that you will miss days and need to plan for this to avoid a horrible 4,000 word-a-day blitz near the month's end.
Each day you sit down and write. There's no not feeling inspired, there's no pontificating endlessly over different permutations and directions that your story can take. You get it done. That's it.
On top of this my birthday is this month (and I likes to celebrate) so I've got to plan around that. And on top of that writing my novel won't even be my top priority each day: writing my posts for Steemit comes first.
So why not just post my story to the blockchain and kill two birds with one stone?
Well, one issue is that I hope to submit this one for publishing.... which means I need to be able to take it down at a publisher's request. Not an option if the entire thing is on the blockchain. The second issue is that I've decided to finish a novel I've been writing rather than write a new one from scratch - I've got too many on the burner and it's high time I reached the finish line on one of them.
That means I'll be starting mid story. Not exactly friendly to new readers. If you're super curious about the story I'll be completing, you can find it here.
Picking up an old story is, in many ways, much harder than starting a new one. This is why a lot of writers never finish their stories. But at some point you simply have to decide that it's time to go for gold. Real champs finish what they start and, god help me, I'm either a champ or really want to be.
So Day 1.
May God help us all.
Wednesday, November 1st, 2017
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