Falling On My Pen
When things go really bad for a professional soldier, there is an expectation that they will improvise, overcome, and adapt to get the job done. When this is, by all practical measure, an impossibility, there is another option open to them. They can fall on their swords. Romans did it in the bath tub, Samurai had a nice cup of tea first. My thoughts on Day 22 of the NaNoWriMo is what the heck are writers supposed to do?
…raising the white flag of literary surrender…
If I fall on my laptop, even with a cuppa fist, I’m really just going to break it, and the tea will make the keys stick even more than they do now. Not really an option. I suppose the best I could do would be to fall on my pen. It at least is sharp and pointy. This is at least in the spirit of the whole falling on something genre.
I am raising the white flag of literary surrender. The word count is too far behind, and life, family, the job, and even the alignment of the planets do conspire against me. OK I made that last bit about the planet alignment up, but the tires on my 12 year old Mercury Sable need an alignment, does that count?
Where did I go worng? Well interestingly, there is an interesting book put out by the founder of the NaNoWriMo called No Plot, No Problem. In the pages of that book are explained all the reasons for my capitulation. Not locking up my Internal Editor. Falling too far behind in the count. Allowing self doubt to creep in after 4 days of writing nothing… Boy If only I had read this before I started!
“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.”
-Paulo Coelho (Mystical author, one of Brazil’s most successful novelist)
Final Tally:
Day: 30 (Made it to 17)
Words: 16,435 of 50,000 (33%)
Pots of Coffee: 15 (1,096 wpp)
Words Per Day: 548
Ahead/Behind: -33,565
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Sir, you are to be congratulated on your brilliant efforts! You didn’t fail, you are not defeated, you have simply learned a little more on your journey to greatness!
Well done, that man!
:)
My advice? Don’t worry about NaNoWriMo. It’s merely an exercise for people with a hell of a lot of time on their hands. Finish your novel in the time you can, with the amount of prepation needed to make it a piece of work that you yourself would march out to the bookstore to buy. I’ll be in line waiting for it…
NaNo was an experience for me to get me back into my writing. I put no pressure on myself and pretty much decided that the only thing I needed to do was write. The word count wasn’t important, just the fact that you wrote at all is what I think everyone should be impressed with….
At least you tried, I couldn’t get myself to do it.
Well I thank you all for the encouragement. I’m going to do a review of what I have and try to press on at a more “relaxed” pace. The book was actually really helpful from a planning point of view and it has given me some more things to think about.
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It has been twenty days since I “Fell on my Pen” in the NaNoWriMo.
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