NaNoWriMo: It's Not All About Winning

NaNoWriMo 2013
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    Including today, there are six days left to write your novel.  How many words do you have left to go?  Do you think you can still win?  If you don't think you can win, I have news for you.  And if you think you can win go ahead and listen in too.  

    Accepting the insane challenge of writing fifty thousand words in thirty days is about more than just winning.  It is about pushing yourself.  It is about challenging yourself.  It is about seeing just what you are capable of.  This is an amazing chance to experiment and learn.  What is your best time of day to write?  Where are you most inspired?  What do you like to listen to when you are writing?  When do you work out your plotting best?  Do you know your answers to any of these questions?  November is a fabulous time of year to try out new things with your writing.  Be adventurous with your writing and writing processes.  There are six days left!  How much do you think you can write in six days?  NaNoWriMo is about more than making a word count.  It is about getting the ideas on something other than grey matter.  It is about getting the story out of your head.  Is there a story in there?  Is there an idea in there?  Play with it.  Have fun.  Just write.  You could be amazed with what or how much you can actually turn out.  Even if you don't pass the 50k mark, look at what you produced.  My first NaNoWriMo, in 2009, only got me about five thousand words.  That is only 10% of the goal.  What it did do though was give me a chance to try to put in words a concept that I had been bouncing around in my head.  It allowed me to attempt to express something that I felt I could contribute to this world.  Furthermore, I credit this as one of the activities that finally pulled me out of a two year writers block. (Yes, writer's block exists.)  What will you achieve attempting what you think might be a stretch or impossible? What will you learn about yourself?  What will you teach yourself?  If you want to write, if you want to express, teach, or even just tell one good story; go write.  

Writing Response

    When I thought of monotonous reasoning I thought of, we do it this way because we have always done it this way.  Is there another way to interpret monotonous reasoning?  Maybe robotic or systematic.  Maybe even without change, which is what I feel I have done with this piece.  The rhythm feels very steady, even boring to me.  But that seems appropriate for the prompt.  Here is my answer to last weeks haiku prompt: monotonous reasoning

This is how we work

Brick by brick or stone by stone

always in this way

Writing Exercise

   One more haiku prompt to finish out the month.  Did you give last weeks prompt a try?  I'll be using the same method to pick this weeks prompt.  Here goes.  First word is 'agreeable.'  The second word is 'vacillation.' I don't know what that means.  New word!  Vacillation  So this weeks haiku prompt is 'agreeable vacillation.'  Have fun and go write something.