Now where was I....

Oh yeah.

Speaking of fun writing communities, it's National Novel Writing Month! I'm going to take a break from publishing advice that I'm probably too young to dispense today and talk about the trauma of the NaNoWriMo novel!

I once read on the NaNo site that the best way to complete a novel is to tell absolutely everyone about it. Similar advice was given to me when I was writing my senior thesis: talking about a work lets you not only figure out where you're going with it next, but also gives you motivation to finish. After all, if you've spent weeks telling everyone about how you're going to write a book and then you don't do it it can be sort of embarassing. I would argue, however, that the difference between the thesis and the novel as forms of communication is that with a thesis, working through it is absolutely necessary. With a novel, it can sometimes take out some of the spunk of the piece, especially if you're editing in process. Thus the value of intensive writing, as I like to call it, or, in other words, experiences like NaNo.

The most important part of being a writer is writing every day. The more writing becomes a part of you, and of your routine, the better you'll get. That's because practice really does make perfect. I know when I have gone for a week or so without writing (horror of horrors) I often find that the words come slower and seem less lyrical. Luckily, that rarely ever happens. But in order to avoid such a terrible fate, keep the gears spinning. Write a little bit, even if it's only a handful of sentences, every day. Just like they force you to do during National Novel Writing Month, when the daily goal is 1,667 words, approximately. Personally I'm not a fan of writing that many words a day, and I often fall short by about 500. HOWEVER, it's more about finishing the story, isn't it? Which involves writing every day, or at least most days.

In order to write every day, I often end up writing from work (yes, I know, this is a bad habit, but I also happen to be blogging from work) and today, I managed to thoroughly freak myself out. See, my current NaNo project is to finish a book I conceived of about a year ago. I knew at the beginning it was going to be a rather dark book, but today I discovered just how dark it's going to go. I thoroughly freaked myself out, like I said. I'm now terrified that one of my characters is hiding in my closet waiting to dismember me. It's even worse in the light of the fact that he was originally a really cool guy. Generally, I'm really worried about what this story says about me as a person - which, one can argue, is a part of writing. At the World Fantasy Convention, I sat in on a panel which was discussing modern trends in horror. In that panel, one of the speakers argued that a writer of horror is in some ways one step away from a serial killer, the difference being that we don't actually enact our fantasies on real people. I would argue that the difference is two-fold, because the writer isn't only the killer, but also the victim. So even as I'm inflicting these horrible fates on my characters, I'm also living them. Making me a particularly masochistic soul, among other things.

Anything for art, right?