A More Foolish Stunt Than NaNoWriMo By Far

I had really intended to post much sooner. The strange weather, a nasty bug, and simple exhaustion all played their part in keeping me from doing so. I hope to put up a few of the posts I've been working on soon, but can't offer an exact date - I'm still struggling with my link collection. I've made progress, but there are still endless links waiting to be added, one at a time, by hand.

In addition, I've had to fit in time to keep up with something I decided to do this year. I mentioned Word Count Journal earlier, where you post every single day for a year, adding one more word to your post each day, until by the end you have over 66,000 words.

Well, I decided to try that. Specifically, I decided to try to write a novel, day by day, "seat of the pants" style. I started with no idea what I was going to write about. I just picked the idea of a glassmaker living in an alternate world out of my head and began to run with it. This is risky for several reasons. First, keeping up even that supposedly simple pace of writing requires more time and effort than those who haven't tried it would guess.

Second, while NaNoWriMo requires much more concentrated work, you are then free to hide what you wrote from the world until you go over it, polish it, and make it fit for reading. What I'm doing now doesn't give me that luxury. If I wander in the wrong direction, I have to somehow find my way back while still fitting the details I wrote about into the narrative.

In other words, there is no chance The Glassmaker will turn out to be a publishable novel. At best, it might be something I could work on to turn into a publishable novel. I do hope it might at least be a minor diversion for my readers. I also hope it might build up my "writing muscles" so I can get more writing done in the long run.

Of course, there is one other tiny point: once I started with the idea of a glassmaker, and started to type, I found the idea running away with me. Although it changes as I go along, I now have some idea where I'm headed. What's more, most days the scenes flow out like water; I find myself writing far more than the required number of words, just to get it all down. I am already at almost 9,500 words!

Go on over and have a look at the story so far (you need to begin with the earliest entry, of course, and work forward) and see if you think it's worth reading. If nothing at all, you may get to see stumble publicly, if you watch closely. Or even if you aren't watching closely at all. If I can simply end this year with something I won't be totally humiliated to admit came from my pen, I'll be more than happy.

Oh, and wait for November; I've decided to try to do NaNoWriMo as well if I possibly can. That should make for a really interesting month. See the Wandering Author wander all over the place trying to keep two stories straight in his head. Watch his characters travel from one book to the other in a strange kind of meta-physics... At least that should give those of you who can stand sticking around that long some entertainment.