I decided at the last minute to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo. Over the Halloween weekend, I wrote out a few pieces that I will schedule to post over the next few weeks. Fridays with Dale have already been scheduled through Thanksgiving.

Here is my first piece for the month…

Geo. Parker

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I’m sure I’m crazy.

I decided to take another shot at NaNoWriMo.

For most of the last few weeks, I was certain that there was no way I was participating this year. So many projects; so little time. There is the as-yet unfinished memoir. There is the stalled California Conservation Corps podcast and website that need to be jump-started. There is the poetry writing that I have recently discovered. (Thank you, Linda Boyden!) There are the ever-present Writers Forum website and newsletter that take time.

How could I park all that stuff for a month and shoot out 50,000 words on a different project? There is simply no time in my life for that sort of commitment.

Then about a week ago…

Hmm. Maybe I could finish the memoir this year. Then it wouldn’t exactly be redirecting my attention from a current project. Then I could feel like I was following through on other commitments, anyway. However, at this point, the memoir doesn’t need 50,000 new words. The only new writing it needs is an 8,000 word bridge at one point. What it needs is editing. It needs words removed in most of it. It needs words rearranged. It needs good words replaced with better words.

NaNoWriMo is not for any of these things. NaNoWriMo’s purpose is to crank out 50,000 words on a new project. No editing allowed at all. The common phrase is that NaNoWriMo is for writers to ‘puke out’ 50,000 words.

New project, huh?

Well, there is the fantasy world that I have been thinking about for about thirty years. Last year, I finally started running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in that world. I even wrote a short story set in that world to explain a background character. Yeah! That’s it! A fantasy novel!

But I’ve actually been stuck in that setting, too. Well, NaNoWriMo will help me brute through those blocks, right?

Still…it doesn’t feel ‘new’ enough for NaNoWriMo.

Then, on the last Friday of October, two days before NaNoWriMo officially starts on November 1, I had a new idea. Well, ‘new idea’ in that I have never written anything in it before.

But it’s an idea that has been stewing for 25 years.

And that will be my NaNoWriMo project for 2020.

Stay tuned for more of my 2020 NaNoWriMo journey.

I would ask for you to share your 2020 NaNoWriMo project origin stories, but since NaNoWriMo is now officially underway, you’re all probably busy with more important projects.

 

Geo.

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