Monday, July 11, 2011

NaNoWriMo Days 8, 9, 10, & 11

I haven't blogged the past few days because... I'm still behind. I did pass the 15,000 word mark -- woot! -- but I still need to write another 1,400 words today to be at the bare minimum. I'm having trouble forcing myself to write. I think part of the reason is that I'm writing this novel "organically" (no outline) so I don't exactly know where I'm going. Since I don't know where I'm going, I don't want to get there. Does that make sense? I'm worried I'll make a mess on my journey. I'm hoping that my first draft of Neighborhood Watch won't be a totally crazy disaster. But it probably will. And if it does end up that way, it's only the first draft, right? I can always edit it later. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

I wrote my first "novel" (in retrospect, it's really just a long short story) almost two years ago. Neighborhood Watch will hopefully be my third 50,000-words-or-longer-novel. But, I have yet to even go through the second draft of a novel since I started writing novels. So, I keep telling myself that I can "edit later" but that's a lot easier to say than to follow through with. I told my family, though, that once I am done with Neighborhood Watch that I would not write another novel until I edit a novel. That should force me to get to work in editing because I want to do NaNoWriMo again next year plus I have tons (ok, maybe just a dozen) novel ideas I would love to work on.

How do you get yourself to edit something you've written?

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