NaNoWriMo Blahs

It's November once again, and for the past three years, that has meant NaNoWriMo, that mad cap race to produce 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days.

Leading up to NaNoWriMo, I was a little on the fence about whether or not to go for it this year. I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo for the last three years, and I have a number of friends and acquaintences online and in meat space that are participating this year.

With that in mind, I started over with a story that I began writing after NaNo was done last year and only got about 6,000 words into. I'm at about the same point now as when I stopped writing last time. There are differences in each version, mostly minor, but with a couple scenes from the original version that have not appeared in any way in the new version. I have a couple scenes in the new version that are expanded from the old version or did not appear in the old version.

This year, more so than any other year, trying to do NaNoWriMo is like pulling teeth. There are a number of factors that I believe are making it so: we have two children at home a 4 year old and a 1 year old (at least last year the 1 year old was only a few weeks old and was still at that mostly lay around or sleep/eat/poop stage); I've got a full-time job and plenty to keep my busy around the house (no real change there from last year); I have another story that I'm almost 20,000 words into that I'm really liking at this point and I want to work on that more than the NaNo; as I'm writing this year's NaNovel, it just seems so dumb which isn't very motivating; and I'm just damn tired.

Why don't I work on the 20,000-word project for NaNoWriMo you ask? Well, for one I'm taking this one a little slower, and I'm writing the first draft all by hand. I enjoy doing that every once in a while and I'm really enjoying the process right now.

Usually during the first few days of NaNo I'm excited and really want to jump into the project. I'm just not feeling that this year. We'll see how the weekend goes and how the story comes along, but if I'm not feeling much better about the whole thing by Monday, I might bow out this year. That would free up more time for the 20,000-word project, which is really what I'd rather be working on right now.