First Post!

I'm going to start this blog by offering an explanation for why it exists. I've decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year as it's something I've always wanted to do but could never muster up the courage to do. However, I've finally come to terms with the fact that there's no better time than the present to try something new, so now it's happening.

NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, is a challenge many different writers participate in where the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel within a single month. If one does the math, that's approximately 1,700 words every day. This might not seem too difficult on the surface, but a little over a week's already past, and I already find myself behind. This is also my first time having a blog. There will be at least 1-2 posts a week documenting my progress, any new hurdles that arise during my time writing this month.

So far, this challenge has had me thinking about two different things: diligence, and editing.

Diligence:
I say diligence because this challenge demands a writer's time, no matter how frustrated the writer becomes. If you give up one day, you still need to sit back down the next day. In my case, you find yourself going to bed later and later. And still, it doesn't seem to be enough, as I'm already so behind.

Editing:
This one comes up as more of a problem, specifically as a personal problem of mine. Given that the challenge demands words out of you, but not necessarily quality writing, it's easy for me to get stuck on the parts I know are badly written. So I'll go back, nitpicking and changing everything up when I know I should be churning out another 1,700 words. Realizing that there's always time to edit later, that the most important part of a first draft is just getting the ideas onto the paper, is actually such an important lesson, which is something I've only just started to learn.

By the time this post goes up, I should have already completed 13,600 words with another 1,700 on the way. Naturally, this isn't the case. I've only managed to do 8,217 words, most of which was written in two big chunks rather than cumulatively every day. It's really nerve-wracking to have this kind of expectation on how much I'm supposed to write every day because it's almost impossible to do. I've realized by schedule makes it basically impossible on some days, for example the days where I'm out from 9 am to 9 pm and the only way I'll get much writing done is to sacrifice sleep. At the same time, that also makes it more engaging.

In spite of my struggle with both of these elements, I'm committed to this challenge, even if I don't succeed. At the very least, it's definitely a good lesson in writing-to-deadline.