It’s National Novel Writing Month!

I’m writing a novel!

I’m not taking part in National Novel Writing Month. Not this year.

I think NaNoWriMo is awesome. It’s a really cool way for people to get it going, and get that novel done. It’s great for perfectionists to stop editing their pages to death and get that rough draft on paper. It’s great for people who don’t think they can actually write a novel to see how a couple thousand words a day can really make a whole novel in just 30 days.

I tried it last year. I wrote Pairs in less than a month in July 2012, so I figured I could do it, no sweat. I wanted to try something new, so I went with a third person middle grade novel. It turned out to be The Clarinet Clique. 

It went all right. About two-thirds of the way through I realized I had two characters I really didn’t need, and I had to make that deadline, so I just combined them in with the others and went on from there. I figured I’d go back and cut them out later. I finished NaNo…sort of. I guess I didn’t actually “win,” because the novel didn’t quite reach 50K, even though I finished it. I could have stretched it, but that seemed stupid, since it was complete to me.

Now that novel is the only one I haven’t shared with anyone. I haven’t gone back and made those changes. It’s not that I don’t think I can do it – I know I can. I’ve read it again, and it’s a pretty good little book, in my oh-so-valuable opinion. I just don’t know if I really want to have a middle grade novel. I’m starting to understand the value in focusing on the type of writing you enjoy the most. I truly enjoy young adult the most. I tried my hand at middle grade because a lot of agents were mentioning how much they wanted to see more middle grade. I just like young adult better. So…I’m just waiting on this book to see what I really want to do with my writing as a whole. If I’d rather rewrite it into a young adult, I’d rather do it all at once, instead of writing it into a better middle grade and then tearing it into a whole new young adult.

Wait. This was about NaNo.

Yeah. I’m writing this awesome new young adult contemporary that’s about these star crossed lovers / teen kids of modern political candidates. I’m in love with it. Thinking about the characters every waking moment…making up extra dialogue and scenes for them when I’m not actually writing things down…that sort of thing. Everybody around me seems to be doing NaNo, but I’m not. NaNo seemed too stressful for perfectionist me last year. If I didn’t get my 1,667 every day, I was all down on myself and trying to catch up. It stunk. Instead, I just outlined until I was bored with outlining, and then I started, around the last week of October. Now I’m almost 20,000 words in. That’s hooray times for me.

And…if I keep it up, I might not have to write 1,667 words when I want to be sleeping off Thanksgiving dinner later this month, bonus!