My Word Count is Steadily Ascending

Good morning!

It's exactly 12:27 a.m.

You know what that means:

LATE NIGHT POST

Get ready to roll your eyes and bang your head against a palm tree, (or any type of foliage that might be nearby. I do not envy you if you live in Arizona. I hear cacti are beastly to bang up against.)

So despite taking 15 credit hours and working about 25 hours a week, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. That's National Novel Writing Month. It's absolutely crazy. I'm actually feeling quite nervous about not being able to finish, and I worry about my novel being absolute crap. I'm not worried about the homework I'm currently procrastinating.

But the pep talks and message of NaNoWriMo is to worry about quantity, not content. The point is to just get the words out there and you can fix it later. Although I'm trying to adopt that as my monthly mantra, I've found it to be quite difficult to stifle my inner editor.

I am an editor after all. First and foremost, before a writer. I am learning to be a linguist, and linguists do not write 1667 crappy words a day.

But I've taken to reminding myself that because I am an editor, I will be able to salvage the misshapen creature I'm creating. I trust myself to tighten up my word hoarding sentences and make my verbs more concise and my descriptions precise and relevant.

One issue I keep running into is that the verbosity I adopted to rack up my word count carries over into my every day writing. Which is not cool. I like to call myself the queen of concise. I'm notorious for editing a friend's paper and leaving it 100 words short of the word count requirement.

I'm mean. I know.

I do love my main character though. I think she's the only reason why I'm still writing. I took a different approach. I usually try to force my personality onto my MC, because I always assume that it will be easier to write about the person I know best.

Not the case. Caroline is completely the opposite of me, and I like writing about a girl that doesn't like to read or study, is easily distracted, has no patience. (Okay, maybe we do have some similar qualities.)

Caroline sees dead people. I call them dead people, but they're really not dead. It's more complicated than that, but I haven't found an accurate way of explaining it. Caroline's still trying to figure it out, so we'll be figuring it out together.

But I love the narrator even more. He's this omniscient figure, but he interjects with his own commentary and feels sympathy for Caroline. He's in love with her.

And that's where it gets weird. But I'm learning a lot. I love my book, even if I want to hate it.

OK. Now it's 12:41 a.m. I've wasted sufficient time telling you about my uber boring life as a writer.

You deserve a Merit Badge or something.

-M