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#NaNoWriMo: Writing about the army

In this year's NaNoWriMo, I'm stumbling along WELL BELOW the requisite pace of 1667 words per day. In fact, on this, the tenth day of November, I have only just broken 5K. I'm not terribly upset about this, because those five thousand words represent more fiction than I've written in the preceding ten months of 2014.

Yes, I know they are mostly crap. Yes, I know that any right-thinking person would quail at the idea of writing so much mostly useless dreck. Yes, I know that the blob floating just outside my field of view is the word FUTILITY carved onto an agglomerated mass of dust motes.

But you know what?

The word FUTILITY is so very, very close to UTILITY. That's what NaNoWriMo is for me this year. There's no way I'll even come close to 50K, but this horrid, fit-for-the-ashcan writing is far from pointless. Its value - its UTILITY, if you will - lies in the fact that it is, in fact, writing.

Which means I haven't forgotten how. I wasn't misremembering. The whole thing was not a dream that the hero wakes from on the last page. I haven't gone dry, or come to my senses, or been abandoned by my muse.

Writing is still there for me if I want it to be.

Now, if I could just write about Victorian army life more compellingly than I have up to this point, I could salvage some of this crap.

||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.

3 comments:

  1. at least you are writing while I couldn't even bring myself to join nano this year. I think the goal should not be to write 50,000 words but to write something, anything that might keep you going.

    good luck & have a great day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I stopped after week one or two, but same thing basically. You put it perfectly. You get words down, you move on. :D

    ReplyDelete

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