I’ve been participating in the National Novel Writing Month for the past four years now, and actually won last year, but for some reason this year is like pulling a rusty nail out of a wet board.
I guess part of that is that I’ve given myself a unique challenge this year: Try to write something that doesn’t suck.
No actually that’s not true, I’m fine with writing a novel capable of sucking an orange through a garden hose. This year’s challenge is to write a story that (a) has no human characters and (b) is written as an oral history. That means each segment of the story is being told in conversational monolog format by a forest critter.
What in the name of Uncle Jesse was I thinking. At least this one doesn’t require any research (unlike the Totally Awesome History of America, failed NaNo concept for 2008) or any real desire to tell a coherent story (unlike my untitled failed NaNo attempt in 2007, about aliens doing alien stuff and who even cares).
I guess winning one year doesn’t really predict whether you’ll win the next. I’m about 4,000 words behind where I ought to be and only have 20 days to make that up, which works out to … uhh … eight million words a day. Maybe this calculator needs new batteries. Anyway, I’ll gamely continue, mostly because this story is shaping up into something interesting, but I suppose I shouldn’t be too disappointed if I limp over the line a few thousand words short.
And hey, if it really really sucks, I’ll just post it here for free. So now you all have something to look forward to. Yay.