Fast Fiction

I have a nemesis for November now. His name is Graham and he lives in the UK. You can visit his journal and see how he’s doing! Leave him a nice note in the comments. I even put him over on my Wrimo blogs list.

I know, some folks don’t like the term enemy or even nemesis. Maybe adversary? Oh, is that still too contentious? Let’s face it sometimes we need a little competition in order to complete a huge task. And that’s all NaNoWriMo is. Sure, it’s all huggy and supportive and whatnot, but sometimes you just need someone to kick your butt. And maybe it’s leading by example - Graham has a full-time job and maybe he’s able to do more words per day than I am, so I’ll just work a little harder to keep up with him.

And I suppose it’s going to work in reverse, too. I wouldn’t say I’m a role model, but I can certainly testify that it can be done and has been done by thousands of people and my life is pretty much an open book and I’m willing to talk about all the tricks I use to get through NaNoWriMo.

And they’re not even tricks. I’m not one for word-padding. I like to joke about it, but I don’t really indulge in using lyrics or quotes. I do, however, just go on incessantly. The “trick” if you can call it that, is to just keep typing. If you’re stuck, just move on. Go to a place that you know, skip to a spot in the story that you can tell. Leave a little asterisk or something there and go back later. It’s in all the books on writing, especially if you’re a disciple of Natalie Goldberg - you just have to go with it.

Sure, my novel will look something like a stream-of-consciousness version of a really wordy outline. But I can attest that it is readable in the most basic of ways. Anything beyond that is gravy, baby.