1,667 freakin' words

I'm sitting pretty at 12,600 words right now. Yes, I'm surprised too and it's all jemima's fault. The Houston newspaper had an article on NaNo; you can find it here.

My favorite part: Here's the deal: Participants must write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. That's 1,667 freakin' words a day. Word counts are determined by an online computer that couldn't care less how good, bad or ugly each work is. Quantity trumps quality in NaNoWriMo.

There you have it. The plain, ugly, unvarnished truth. We're not delusional; crazy, yes, but not delusional. We know we're not producing good stuff or even mediocre. We understand there's a reason why March is National Novel Editing Month. We know that 1,667 words/night is a hard quota to make. I didn't make it last year -- I fell about 7,000 words short. That's precisely the reason I'm back this year, even though I know this is possibly one of the most mind-bending, thankless things I've ever done. It's about guts and glory, baby! We're doing it because it's hard; like I said, didn't manage to finish last year and there's no shame in it. But I gave it a go and for that reason, I've have 43,000 words I wouldn't have had otherwise.

NaNo is about the challenge of the human spirit, to know there are people out there doing it with you, other people who are desperately trying to make a go of the novel thing. It's a time to sit down and force discipline into ourselves and just keep on going, come what may. So what if your characters start swapping cookie recipes like mine did last year or randomly burst into the chorus of "Moon River"? That's really not the point and it never has been.

I love reading the forums over at NaNoWriMo and I enjoy seeing what other people have done. For me, it's the perfect time to put aside other writing and work on a story idea that has been knocking around my brain for the last three months. I'm very aware that some of you will never see this year's novel, just like you didn't see last year's novel. But I'm in it for the challenge and the thrill of saying, "I wrote 50,000 words in a month."

There's no shame in admitting you're in it for the word count and not much else.