Hello friends. Here I am procrastinating by writing a blog post about my thoughts on writing instead of actually plotting for my upcoming novel for Camp NaNoWriMo.
For the uninitiated, you may be wondering what the heck even is NaNoWriMo? Why the capitalisation of random alphabets? Well, it actually stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s usually held in the month of November every year. It’s basically a community of writers encouraging each other to reach a goal of writing 50000 words in a month. There’s even a certificate that’s handed out by the end of the month if you’ve succeeded in reaching the goal. It’s a very fun project. You get to browse a lovely forum filled with an incredible range of writers – all procrastinating from actually writing as well – with tons of tips and tricks to encourage you to write. Yes, the irony is not lost on me. Haha!
In the past few years they’ve actually held a version of it in April which has a more flexible goal and timeframe. Instead of writing 50000 words for a novel, you get to choose if you’d like to focus on writing a script instead or a less daunting word count. I chose to set a goal of 30000 words seeing as how 50000 words seemed like quite a bit of a stretch for someone who hasn’t flexed their writing fingers for a long time.
Even thinking of writing a thousand words a day for a whole month has me shaking in my seat. Oh dear God what have I gotten myself into. I think the most I’ve written in a day for the past year or so would be the 100-300 words of patient reviews in case notes.
As a start, I’ve decided that if I’m not able to write anything down for the novel, I might as well blog about something. So you might find a surge of posts about inane or boring topics on this blog. There might also be a lack of posts; a consequence of either me being so caught up in writing the novel or the direct opposite – I’ve procrastinated so much that I’ve not written anything at all. (At this point I’m tempted to add in a meme or emoticon to further illustrate my point but I shall refrain. It’ll probably distract from the utter seriousness I’m trying to portray on my blog. HAH.)
I’m typing this out as sort of a post about accountability I suppose. So you get to message me and ask, “HAVE YOU WRITTEN TODAY?” And if you’ve gotten this far, let me tell you a little about the stories that I’m planning to write in April.
I’m primarily focusing on a story that involves the concept of soulmates. But it isn’t the sort that involves butterflies, sunshine, DRAMA. I want to write something that is aromantic in a world that emphasizes on it. I have a set of characters in my head that isn’t quite fully fleshed out yet (I’m procrastinating, help me) and a series of plots that I haven’t quite pieced together. I wanted it to be a novel which has short stories about how these random human beings connected with one another. My husband told me that I should consider making it a series of books instead and that got me laughing. His enthusiasm in my story is very endearing and motivating. Anyway, I’m still working out the kinks. I don’t really have much beyond a general idea that I wanted to bring out. Hopefully it works out.
The other novel that I’m thinking of jotting down ideas for is actually one that I’ve written halfway several years back. I reread the few chapters that I wrote and I was intrigued by my own writing. I wanted to know what happened next! And that made me feel excited! If I actually wanted to read it, it could only mean that my story has potential right? Well, I certainly hope so. The draft is really rough around the edges but there’s a plot and there’s two characters that I like. I might fiddle around with this story too if the soulmates one doesn’t pan out. It’s more of a story for those in the middle-school age group. Nothing too dramatic that involves sparkly vampires and under-the-rain kisses.
There’s also MaPoWriMo in April, the Malaysian initiative for writing poetry. A prompt will be released every day in the month of April and anyone can submit their poems to be enjoyed and also to be critiqued if you’re new to it. I’ve always written really sub-par poems. I write with the most basic of rules – alliteration. I’m not great at line breaks, the musicality of it. I try, but really, it’s just a bunch of words thrown together haphazardly. It would be nice to learn to write poetry, and MaPoWriMo does encourage newbies to post up their work on their Facebook group to be critiqued. Am I brave enough for that though? Maybe not just yet. According to this article about how to write better poems – I should read more poems in order to get a better grasp of it. I think I’ll start with that. Reading. Then attempting.
Oh, I’ve also almost forgot about that one other writing event that I told myself to participate in. It’s a writing competition organized by the University of Nottingham Malaysia. It’s called the Malaysian Short Story Writing Competition 2022 – straight to the point haha – and it closes in June. I’ve linked it for those interested. I’m still in a dilemma as to what to write about since there’s no theme for it, nor a general direction for the stories they’re looking for. I’m thinking of writing a story about Covid-19 but then again, aren’t we all just so tired of the virus already. Oof. Back to sitting on the thinking chair.
Now that I’ve written it out, it seems like a whole lot. Hmm. I suppose I’ll just have to try and see how it goes. Seems like that’s my motto nowadays.
I do hope this post has been a small source of enjoyment for you. Nothing much to this really, other than the fact that I’ve just written 1032 words of pure nonsense. Now I really have to get back to actually plotting for my novel.
Till the next (boring) blog post.
Love, Nicole.
Victorious Heart 