When I start writing my novel-in-a-month in November, I'm going to have to remember that I'm leaving myself the leeway to suck. I don't mind writing or being pressured under a deadline to write - but I usually want to make sure everything is pretty good before moving on to the next thought or "chapter" of whatever bunny trail I'm chasing at the time. I'll have to discipline myself not to go back and read or spend too much time on corrections. And I think I'll have to condition myself to be comfortable at Starbucks, hammering away at the laptop keyboard, making text come to life as prose over a chai latte.

I'm actually excited about the whole ordeal. It's more than I've bitten off before, and I'm looking forward to the challenge as much as the end of the month, when I'll get my wife and at least one or two other close friends read through my "manuscript" and give me helpful non-violent criticism. Being serious - I'd love to publish. I'd love to write something worth someone else's money and investment. So whatever I actually get down on paper/CRT-screen, I want to make sure there's something salvageable to maybe progress it even further.

So why am I writing this right now? I wanted to sit for a few minutes and see how many words I could type off the cuff. The goal of NANOWRIMO is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. So I'm typing here to see how many words I tend to hit in a five-minute span.

How many? 270. Not bad, but not 50K either.
- posted by Rick @ 10:43