Humble pie served with 50,000 words.

And so today I have reached the NaNoWriMo benchmark of 50,000 words.

I've known about NaNoWriMo for some years but never bothered to participate. To those who I pompously said I didn't need some silly annual rite to get me to write, I apologize. There is something to be said for participating in an endeavor such as NaNoWriMo. Most importantly it gets a rough draft down on paper - or in a computer file - where it belongs, as apposed to the inside of your skull where it's not doing any good.
But I wouldn't have tried NaNoWriMo if I hadn't done something else first. In August of this year I participated in 31 Plays In 31 Days. I did this because I am acquainted with the people who put it together. And I like to support my acquaintances and friends. From that I came away with 31 play ideas, one of which is already going to be part of a 10-minute play production in May. (More on that another time.)
That month got a lot of good ideas on down on paper/computer where I could do more with them. It really pushed the little grey cells. I was glad to have participated and continued to work on some of the play ideas I'd developed as I also struggled with working on a second novel manuscript.
I was having a tough time making the novel move out of my skull and into my computer. And then I hit a long stride where I didn't write anything. I needed a kick start.
That's when I remembered NaNoWriMo. I knew about it, heard about it, and had been encouraged to join in the year before to which I disdainfully excused my self. I am a fool.
I did it this year, the proof's above. And my novel's far from complete, they haven't even dug the canal to save the butterfly colony on the planet Navjaro and there's still the stampede that threatens the human colony town of Unua Patrio to deal with. (I am such a tease!) But I have the first 50,000 words. I have the beginning and I'm over the hump and the adventure is racing downhill from here.
And none of this would be here on my computer if I hadn't signed up for NaNoWriMo.
I've done it before, written a complete manuscript (90,000+ words), without the assistance of a project like 31 Plays In 31 Days or NaNoWriMo. But by participating in them I have more material now then I would have if I hadn't. That makes all the difference.

Even one line in a rejection can be useful.

I hate being rejected. Everyone does. Well, there are those that get their kicks that way. However, it's made me uncomfortable ever since I first asked a girl to dance at the teen center. But as a writer I've grown to expect rejection. You submit and submit and you get rejected and rejected. At first it's painful, then it hurts, and then it's just annoying. Occasionally it's helpful.

I'm currently submitting queries to agents for my first book. I've gotten tons of "no thanks" rejections. But three of them were different from the rest. One of them said that they thought my protagonist was a strong character. That's good to know, I read that as me being on the right track. The other two weren't drawn in from the first chapter. I read that as saying my first chapter isn't strong enough. There's something wrong with it, go fix it. Helpful comments that give me something to work with. Just a line here and a line there and I have some idea how my manuscript is being perceived.

So, yes, I did rewrite the first chapter. Now it's time to send it out again and see if other agents have something to say. Hopefully one of them will say, "We'll take it!"

Creating Motivation

Well, I've been absent from my own world it seems. I've been struggling with writing. Not that I've nothing to write, but I've had a hard time getting myself to just sit at the keyboard and write. In August I'd done the 31 Plays In 31 Days and wrote every day, building some really good bones for future short plays and hopefully even a one-act. I'm going to self-publish what I did in August through CreateSpace in the next couple of months. No one will read this, so it doesn't matter.
So with the last two months being a struggle to commit myself to writing I have taken the great leap to join in on NaNoWriMo. Yep, I'm committing to writing a novel in a month. And it's not something I've worked on before that I'll be perfecting. No, it's an idea I've had for a while, started as a first person short story, and thought there was enough in the idea that it could be an 80,000 word novel, if I would just write it. And so I am. So, two days in and I've written 4700 words. They are hoping to get people to a 50,000 total but I'll need to find another 30,000 words in me somewhere. Once done I'll need to rewrite. Probably extensively, but at least I'll have something to work on and hopefully the momentum will carry me forward into the following months. We've a baby on the way, so that'll make things interesting.

Anyway, just checking in. Though no one's here. I like an empty room. So uncluttered. :)