Saturday, November 8, 2008

Creative Deadlines

Here's what I love about NaNoWriMo, and I know it's weird, but pressure totally gets my creative juices flowing. And make no mistake: NaNo creates pressure. With only a month to create a novel, the pressure of a deadline, especially when a lot of people KNOW about your deadline, can be paralyzing.

I had no idea what I was going to write about. I thought about it all through October. November 1 rolled around and I still couldn't come up with a good concept. But I went to bed that night thinking, no, stressing, about it, and woke up with not one, but three great ideas, all begging me to write about them!

Now one idea will probably work best as a picture book, but the other two are full-blown middle-grade novels. So if I write both this month, I'll have my 5o,ooo words.

The pressure is mounting...and I'm thrilled!

4 comments:

Sarah Laurenson said...

Wow. Two books during the month of November. I say, go for it! And Good Luck!

Sherrie Petersen said...

Thanks, Sarah. Are you NaNo-ing this year?

Vivian Mahoney said...

Best of luck!

Sarah Laurenson said...

I did it once before. It was an invaluable lesson and better than a lot of classes or workshops as it taught me about my style of writing and what makes my creative heart tick.

Then I didn't write a single word for 3 months.

I thought once was enough, but I am tempted to do it again sometime. It must be that I need a few years off in between. I would hope my next attempt would turn out to be closer to a publishable state.

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