NaNoWriMo

I started to attempt National Novel Writing Month again this year. I've done it in the past, and I've even "won" twice. This year, I'm not going to finish.

I could make excuses like "I just started a new job" (true) "which usually leaves me exhausted" (true) and "I'm trying not to lose my semblance of a social life" (true) "which means, for example, that I only have an hour at home on Tuesdays" (true), all of which are factors in my wordcount of less than 10K right now.

But the main reason that NaNo is not working for me is that I care too much about this story idea. It's one that's been in my head for literally years, and I want it to work, even in a first draft. And right now it's not working. The plot isn't there and the tone is absolutely wrong. And I care too much about the story to want to throw in flying monkeys or black-suited ninjas.

So the way I see it, I have a few choices. I can try to restart this story, locking myself away and trying hard to gget to 50K in...twelve days. I could restart this story and change my goal to either 20 or 25K (...in twelve days). I could switch stories, also resetting the goal.

Or I could quit thinking of it as NaNo, which is a fairly arbitrary thing anyway that in the past has left me mentally and writingly (you'd think I'd know a better adverb for that, wouldn't you? One that actually exists?) drained and uncreative through December, and just try to write something, a few hundred words at least, every day.

I pick the last one.