I've participated in several Nano's, and have won a majority, which means I can put out words with the best of them. However, as soon as Dec 1 rolls around, I immediately move on to whatever else interests me.
That means I have half a dozen 3/4 novels in my life, and not an ending among them.
The closest I've gotten is when I wrote a story out of order, so I do have most of a novel, including a last chapter, but it's complete in the 'swiss cheese' kind of way where I couldn't really call it a draft.
Which is just infuriating to me, because I love writing. I mean, I also hate it. But mostly love, and I really want to get ONE novel done and polished up enough to send out, so I don't live to be eighty and my grand kids want to know why I have ten thousand notebooks filled with writing when they had no idea I was a writer. And also why I insist on stealing their hover boards when I can't even walk any more (I WAS PROMISED HOVER BOARDS).
So I've made myself a goal of at least having a FULL DRAFT and ideally, a second draft, before I turn thirty. Because I anticipate that being the time where I really start to loose my crap and ask questions like "what are you doing with your life?" "why are you so disappointing?" and "why can't I afford to have a proper midlife crisis with a fancy car and everything?"
And that's happening next September. So I spent my first few hours of declaring this goal making an excel spreadsheet. Because of course I did. And then I researched character names, and locations, and medical school. Because obviously I can't just write, that's crazy talk.
But I'm happy to say I've made a proper start, and I am full steam ahead-
Also I joined a writing forum, and then spent a few hours researching what a query was, because why not. Listen, what I'm trying to say, is I'm setting this realistic goal because I have a real hard time sticking with things-
I just read Lexicon, and it was pretty good- OH MY GOD.
tl;dr Novel. Complete. Polished. September 14, 2015. It's going to happen if I have to throw my router out a damn window.
That means I have half a dozen 3/4 novels in my life, and not an ending among them.
The closest I've gotten is when I wrote a story out of order, so I do have most of a novel, including a last chapter, but it's complete in the 'swiss cheese' kind of way where I couldn't really call it a draft.
Which is just infuriating to me, because I love writing. I mean, I also hate it. But mostly love, and I really want to get ONE novel done and polished up enough to send out, so I don't live to be eighty and my grand kids want to know why I have ten thousand notebooks filled with writing when they had no idea I was a writer. And also why I insist on stealing their hover boards when I can't even walk any more (I WAS PROMISED HOVER BOARDS).
So I've made myself a goal of at least having a FULL DRAFT and ideally, a second draft, before I turn thirty. Because I anticipate that being the time where I really start to loose my crap and ask questions like "what are you doing with your life?" "why are you so disappointing?" and "why can't I afford to have a proper midlife crisis with a fancy car and everything?"
And that's happening next September. So I spent my first few hours of declaring this goal making an excel spreadsheet. Because of course I did. And then I researched character names, and locations, and medical school. Because obviously I can't just write, that's crazy talk.
But I'm happy to say I've made a proper start, and I am full steam ahead-
Also I joined a writing forum, and then spent a few hours researching what a query was, because why not. Listen, what I'm trying to say, is I'm setting this realistic goal because I have a real hard time sticking with things-
I just read Lexicon, and it was pretty good- OH MY GOD.
tl;dr Novel. Complete. Polished. September 14, 2015. It's going to happen if I have to throw my router out a damn window.