On Certain Failure and Doing It Anyway

I’m going to fail NaNoWriMo this year.

For those who don’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month. The premise is simple: write 50,000 words in a month. Sounds daunting, right? It is. It’s also a wicked rush, and a lot of fun. I’ve done it the past three years in a row, and succeeded every time. This year, I’m going to fail, and I’m OK with it.

The biggest difference this year is the lack of one cohesive novel idea. Instead I have a series of short stories and blog posts I’m working on, all with different needs and different developmental stages. The result is a little chaotic. Without one sole focus, the ideas are bouncing around a bit more than usual, and keeping an accurate word count is proving problematic.  What’s a disorganized writer to do?

The answer is simple: Everything. Do everything, and let the words come as they will, whether the end result is 50 or 50,000. The tweet below sums up my feelings perfectly:

https://twitter.com/AmeliaAngelRose/status/397204084685410304

So that’s the plan for this November. And maybe that’s not such a failure after all.