Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Welcome back to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog.
Laura chose our question for this month:
If you do NaNoWriMo, why do you do it? If not, why not?
No NaNoWriMo for me this month. I have Etsy on my mind. And family. And Thanksgiving. And lots and lots of excuses.
I freely admit that most of my reasons for avoiding NaNo are excuses. It’s hard work! But among my best reasons are: When I attempt NaNo,
I rush through my story. Lots of telling, but very little showing.
I still manage to be tooooooooooooooooo wordy. Out of 50k last year, I suspect 20k needs to go.
By the time I finished my 50k, I was so exhausted I could barely function. And worse, I was tired of my story.
By the end of my 50k, I adored my tersely spoken, non-human characters, but I didn’t much like my humans. I still liked my basic concept, but many of the carefully crafted details had stopped making sense.
And a year later, I still haven’t gotten back to clean up or finish that manuscript. I can’t decide if I simply can’t cope, or if I’ve moved on.
So for now, I’ve decided not to worry about it. I’ll get back to that story eventually. For now I’ll work on the other things that have caught my fancy.
Speaking of new toys, I recently joined Google+, but I really don’t know what to do with it. Are you on Google+? What’s the best way to network when social media is a foreign language?
I'm not doing NaNo this year either. Instead I'm re-re-re-writing a NaNo novel from a couple years back. :shrug: It works for me.
ReplyDeleteI joined Google+ a while back. It seems like it's heyday already passed - when Facebook changed their format and ticked everyone off. Since then, it seems so very 'meh' to me. I'll stick with FB and now Twitter. And of course, my blog.
I didn't join 'cause I didn't want to be forced to write a jumbled mess. I'm good with writing a jumbled mess voluntarily with no pressure. =)
ReplyDeleteI joined Google+ and I, um, have no clue what I'm doing. I like that it's better organized.
Hi B.E.! I need to re-re-rewrite, too. Sigh. Someday. :-)
ReplyDeleteI *hope* G+ isn't over and done with! I flatly refuse to touch FB. Toooo many security issues.
LOL Elizabeth! I'm with you on jumbling my story up without pressure.
Hm. It's sounding like no one quite knows what to do with G+. :-{
You have learned the hard way, I guess! I think I suspect that most of those things will happen with me too, so I've avoided it too, on top of other reasons. Great post, Deb!
ReplyDeleteHi Lydia! I've decided NaNo is a love or hate it event - and I need to decide which it is every year. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThat's a great analysis of why NaNo isn't the best fit for everyone--and great arguments for why one should think carefully before deciding to tackle a promising idea this way. Wonderful post!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sarah. I suspect I did ruin that story, and I'll need to start over to recover it. But I think I can use all my non-human chapters! :-)
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