I’m expecting it to be a tough competition; after all I’m up against some pretty tough competitors. Let’s see, just to start I’m coming out of the gate with no preparation whatsoever, so we’ll call competitor number one “Unpreparedness”. Yup, as crazy as it is, I have no story in mind, so characters, no plot, and no outlining done in advance of spending 30 days frantically trying to knock off a 175 page, 50,000 word novel. Even my coffee won’t talk to me this morning.
Competitor number two is “Mind Block”, who also runs by the street name “Blank Mind”. This one is a devious hooligan who sneaks up on you when you least suspect it and can make you forget names, faces, and phone numbers at the most embarrassing moments possible. And true to form, Blank Mind has struck before I could even get out of the gate and I have sat down to start NaNo with absolutely no idea what I’m going to write or even what genre it will end up being.
Right now I’m wrestling with the third competitor, “Procrastination”. Procrastination has an insidious way of finding other things to distract you with so that the project you are supposed to be working on gets subtly shifted to the back burner while that rude little clock ticks down your time until it runs out. Let’s see, I’ve dallied around with picking at some housecleaning and laundry, fidgeted with the radio, drank two cups of coffee with visions of skeletal fingers and Halloween spooks dancing in my head, battled with will power to stay out of the kids over-sized over-stuffed bags of Halloween treats, and am now writing a blog post instead of working on my NaNo novel. Heck, I’ve even tried getting onto the official NaNoWriMo website, and quite foolishly too. Of course it’s going to be overloaded, slowed down, and likely not even working. Everyone from every country in the world is trying to get in to see if they have any new writing buddies, waste time with Procrastination browsing the site, chats, and searching for any useless blurbs they can read. And, of course, posting that first paltry word count just for the sake of posting a word count.
I can’t say I’ve ran into “Writer’s Block” yet. I think I have to actually be writing something and struggling with it for that. Since I haven’t even broken past Mind Block to start writing, Writer’s Block is still somewhere ahead of me on the track. No doubt he’s got some trick up his sleeve to cheat when I do catch up to him. He’s kind of like Wile E. Coyote.
There are a lot more competitors out there of course; it is pretty stiff competition after all. Maybe I’ll go into more of them later.
For now, maybe you can add to my list of NaNo competitors:
1. Unpreparedness
2. Mind Block a.k.a. Blank Mind
3. Procrastination
4. Writer’s Block
4 comments:
Drivel is a good competitor. Or maybe it's a companion. I didn't procrastinate -- I started right in, but I might as well not have written anything considering that what I wrote are simply words.
Wishing you luck. Got to go and sweep leaves. It's November. Just no my month for NaNo. Wishing you luck.
Pat, I suspect Drivel is a partner in crime to Mind Block.
When all else fails and we can't think of anything to write, sometimes we write what we think we shouldn't.
And sometimes the drivel we right might just turn out to be better than we ourselves think.
Thanks Sheila :)
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