NaNo WriMo

I've been hearing about this thing in the fan fic community called NaNo WriMo -- it's a challenge for people to write 50,000 words of a novel between midnight on November 1st and 11:59pm on November 30th. You don't win anything or get your story published or anything like that, it's just a reason to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and let go of the fear; don't reread, don't rewrite, just plough forward, ever forward.

Writing can be a terrifying process. If you're writing something that you ever intend to let anyone else read, writing can be as nerve wracking as public speaking, as soul-baring as acting, as emotional as singing. Writing is not for the faint of heart. And you cannot do it simply to please an audience -- at least, not well.

I was looking at the web site of one of my favorite fan fic authors, who is also currently my personal hero, and he said that he doesn't write to be read. He writes because there is nothing else for him to do; it isn't a choice, it's a calling. He says:

"If I were locked in solitary confinement for years on end with paper and pens enough to last me, I'd probably be all right. Unhappy, but sane. If I had no books and nothing with which to write, I imagine I'd end up sitting in my little cell telling stories to the walls. It's not that I require an audience so much as I have to put the thoughts somewhere -- I don't care if anyone ever reads them, so long as they're there."

That's the kind of freedom I wish I had with my writing. That's who I was at three years old, in the photograph my mother gave me. I am sitting on our front porch at the old house wearing an old Halloween costume over my regular clothes, with purple shoes on, my bear clutched in one hand, a short stick in the other, singing to myself and narrating little stories in which I was always the protagonist. I never needed an audience back then. I was my own audience; I contained whole worlds of people and places and things in my head, and my imagination was limitless and effortless and free.

Somewhere along the way, I lost that freedom that comes from not needing anyone's approval but your own. Now I find myself lost in worry that something I've written isn't good enough, isn't spectacular enough, isn't original enough or engaging enough or flashy enough. Enough for what? For whom? Even my own private journal that I write in by hand that no one but me is ever allowed to see, I sometimes censor because it isn't "good" enough. Why? Shouldn't my own thoughts be good enough for me?

I think that's why the NaNo WriMo concept intrigued me. Could I do it? Could I churn out 50,000 words and if they were crap, let them be crap? I'm not sure. I'm constantly rewriting. Revising. Even this blog will be reread and revised. My current "novel writing schedule" is to write and write and write, whenever I can, but to take one chapter per week, and spend the whole week -- in between the new writing and "real" life -- to edit and revise it. I send it to my beta reader and my brit-picker and they edit it and send it back and I look it over and make changes and send it to them again. I try to get it to a point that I'm happy with it by the end of the week so that I can publish it on the fan fic websites on Friday, in time for the onslaught of weekend readers. Because I'm vain and I like the praise. =)

That seems to work well for me, but I'm not sure I could move forward with the writing without going back to reread and revise. When I get stuck, I go back and read what I've written before. And when I read what I've written before, I inevitably change it.

Now I'm going to go post this without rereading. Ok, well, I'm not sure I can do that... Maybe I'll reread it and just not make any changes. I'm not sure I can do that, either... =)