When going to graduate school became “someday later” rather than “someday soon,” one of the things I promised myself that I’d do is dedicate more of my time to fiction writing, which I always seemed to cast aside in favor of more seemingly important academic goals. Well not any more. So I have this fiction blog, which I talk about (not nearly?) enough called Critical Futures which is part of my ongoing struggle/effort to write and edit my fiction. And I’m writing another novel-ish project that will probably--but no promises--end up on CF in several months.
When people ask me “what do you do,” I say “I’m a writer,” which is true, not just because I’ve got a novel going on in my head (and who doesn’t?) but because my day-job is also as a writer, so it doesn’t feel so fake, but when I say “a writer,” I almost always think of space ships and distant outposts of human civilization, and not web technology. Not that I dislike the internet or the software that makes it go, but because the space ships are probably the most important/meaningful (to me) things things that I write.
In November, answering “What do you do?” (write.) “What are you writing?” (a novel) seems much less remarkable because of NaNoWriMo.
In the past I’ve been bitter about NaNo, sometimes because I’ve not been in a place where I can get started, or because I feel like it’s teaches the wrong lesson about novel-length writing, or whatever. This year, I’m bitter. To each their own, I say. I’m not participating because I have a project at a crucial stage, I feel like the biggest objective of NaNoWriMo isn’t “get a lot of writing done,” but rather “prove that almost everyone is capable of sitting down and writing a book length thing, if they can get through the crap.” And I know this. I also know that I can write at NaNo-like speeds should I need to.
But.
I am going to, for the month of November, take a brief reprieve from my “don’t write about your writing on your blog” rule, and for the benefit of NaNoWriMo spirit write a little bit about a few writing related topics. I’ll be writing other things as well like linux and open source and knitting, but I think it’ll be cool to reflect a bit on Critical Futures and my current project, and some stuff about my writing process. Because that’s what I have.
How many of you out there are doing NaNo? For the first time? If you write novels in some other way?