This! This! This!

Read this. Now.
And now I finally realize how much of an idiot I've been for the past... er... ever.

Now excuse me while I go and read every book about animals that I can find.
(And so this doesn't turn out to be the shortest blog post ever, allow me to share some thoughts that have been building up in my brain for quite a while.)

Writing. Of course. What else would I talk about? (Would you prefer me talking about how I helped rake the yard today? No? Then you'll have to bear hearing about writing. Humph). Anyway, here are some thoughts accumulated about NaNoWriMo and book writing in general, and while I certainly don't feel qualified to say "this is how you do it, and this is the best way of doing it" (since, after all, I failed NaNo, not to mention that that failed novel is the longest thing I've ever written), I will still babble on about this because I think it's worth a listen and it's a worthy novel writing plan.

So, first of all, my thoughts on NaNoWriMo.

Well, I'm a bit torn about it. On the one hand, I hate it. On the other, lots of people like it, and it gets people writing, not to mention that it creates friends and little mini novel writing communities.

I guess hate is probably really overstating things. I don't like it, I guess I should say. Well, it's not even that. As I said, I like it because it manages to get people writing and finishing their novels, and it gets people going out and socializing with other writers who are attempting to do the same thing as them. But I guess the problem I have with it is the fact that I don't do well with deadlines, nor the concept of writing 1,667 words every single day for a month. Most of the time I was writing I just barely squeezed past the goal and a lot of the time I wrote nothing until the last possible moment (and stayed up until 2 AM because of that). While NaNoWriMo did really kick me into action and stop me from just thinking about writing and worlds and plots and make me actually write and plot- and world-build, it also was very tiring. The day that it really went downhill was the day that I didn't write anything, not even three words. The concept of 1,000 seemed too horrible to think about, and I felt like if I was going to write then I'd have to at least write 100 or 200 or 500 or 999 (*insert dramatic violin music of doom and a long scream*), or else it wouldn't really matter anyway. After that I just let myself write less and less until I realized that TRWW needed a huge makeover anyway, and I would have to start over again so what I wrote didn't even matter.

You see, writing every day and not necessarily taking too much care for small details and little typos (that can be ironed out later in the editing process) is good. The only thing that's bad is writing so many words every day. Any worries you may have about the wrong word placement or a clumsy and hard-to-understand sentence are dispelled -- and replaced with worries about reaching your word count and finishing your novel on time. You stay up too late, eat too many chips and other snack and convenience foods, and drink more coffee than every person on earth combined drinks in a month. You don't care about typos or misspellings or incoherent sentences, and you don't take notice when you fall asleep on the keyboard and start typing whatever is happening in your dreams. These things are not good habits, for your writing or yourself. And after I quit NaNo, I had to take a few days of doing nothing but surfing Failblog and doodling before I felt like writing or even thinking about writing again.

NaNoWriMo is great. It makes people start writing. It makes someone who was stuck or spending too much time on the details of a world or a character or a plot stop worrying about stuff and just jump in. Heck, it rekindled my excitement for writing and now I'm feeling like TRWW could be a really good book if I put enough energy into rehabilitating it. If I hadn't joined NaNoWriMo, I probably would still be lying around on the floor watching TV and thinking only half-interestedly about what to do with the wreck that is Thenew, and how else to rip off Warriors, and instead I've started working on a completely different book and world and really feeling like I have an idea of what I want to write about. Plus, I got a chance and a reason to write a really specific, structured plot, and all of this has really helped me learn and grow, not to mention that the link above might not have been read or found if it wasn't for NaNo.
But NaNoWriMo is still a lot of work, and I think it could even tire someone of writing if they forced themselves too much. I like the NaNoWriMo method of writing, but it takes a lot of time and energy.

So, I've thought of what I think is a better way. A bit like NaNo, but much easier, and probably more fun.

The only thing you have to do?

(Drumroll, please)

Write ten words every day.

That should be your word count goal. Ten words.

Why? Why such a measly amount of words? Why such an unhelpful, tiny number of words?
Because this way you can work on many projects at once. You can have a social life. You can stop drinking coffee and 5-hour energy drinks faster than the world can produce them. You can stop staying up until sunrise writing, and you can stop feeling like writing is torture. You won't burn out as easily, and you won't run out of time to think about other projects and work on other things. And when you get stuck, you don't have to force yourself to write. If you're stuck, ten is a good number of words to write -- not very hard, and rather than stopping writing altogether (and that probably means you'll just give up on the book), you will still be making progress and getting past that block, no matter how slowly. On good days your word count will soar even higher from ten to 1,000 to 3,000 to 5,000 words; and you will never, ever have to torture yourself to achieve such a number. Because ten words even when you're stuck is a breeze, and 4,000 when you're not is even less work.

Then again, I haven't written using this technique before, but one thing is for sure: I will. Once I figure out this whole TRWW mess and get that plot and those characters cleaned up and sensible once more, of course.

So, tl;dr, I suppose, is that you should really read that journal by *Droemar, NaNoWriMo is good but a bit too much work, I think that a good way to write a book is to have your minimum wordcount goal ten words, and you should take everything I say with a grain of salt because I haven't tried writing a book by writing ten words everyday, so there is still a liability of my theories exploding (or imploding).

-Willow


P.S.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is awesome.