Posting this a few days late and a few words short but I feel the need to update you guys on my progress. For starters, although I am only half way to where I should be (if I were keeping pace with everyone else participating) I am further than I ever thought I could personally get! What's even better is that I'm STILL writing. I've been sort of a flake when it came to writing a novel for a long long long long time. Finishing this would be my first and I'm excited to get to the finish line!
I started with an outline that I drafted, along with character profiles, before November 1st even arrived. I can say with great certainty that the only parts of the original outline I kept in what I'm writing, is none! Don't know how it happened but I found just writing and letting my mind and fingers dictate where the characters would go next and what they would say next is working better for me than being led by a pre-determined outline. I guess it's true when they say every writer's style is different. Whatever works best for you is something you should do no matter how unorthodox you think it might be.
For the first week I was trying to follow all the guidelines and self-help books that claim to teach you how to write the perfect novel in under a month. But by this second week I realized none of those tips helped. The best advise I got and can give to anyone who is participating in this NaNoWriMo or writing just because is to simply write. If you have a story to share then share it. With the way the internet works and with all the sites out there devoted to independent self-publishing there is no reason why you couldn't. I could (and probably will) write this novel, spruce it up a bit, and go to a site like lulu.com (for example) to make hardback copies for my friends and family to give as gifts. I don't need to be a bestseller on a shelf to finish this book. Everyone is different and everyone who's participating is doing it for different reasons.
How exciting it's been for me, going into week three, to chat with people from all over who are participating in NaNoWriMo. Support and endless writing is what it's all about. I can't think of a better time to give being a novelist a try than in the month of November!
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