Writing about writing

NaNo Survival 101 - How not to do it

I guess it really is time to give an update on the whole NaNo experience, something I probably should have done days ago, but I simply haven’t had the time to do. Why no time? Well because of NaNo of course! I am a horrible overachiever, and as such, I have set myself some highly unrealistic goals, that will surely be the end of me. Never the less, here I am, trying to fit in a little blog post right in the middle of dying due to stress.

When I started planning, it came out no less than 26 chapters. Therefore I obviously set myself the goal of doing a chapter a day, giving me little wiggle-room near the end, and still be done with the entire novel on time. Now in the last book I wrote, the chapters were roughly 4000-4500 words long. With “Murder Michael Mayhem”? Not so much. If anything they are scoring around 5500-6000(!!!) words per chapter, which is a fuck load to do every single day. Trust me when I say, I’m going to need that wiggle-room. Apparently bloody murder, gay sex scenes, plot and character development takes up a fucking lot of words! Who would have thought?!

Now if I keep this up, the book will come out way above 100.000 words. That is… A lot. What I thought would be this nice little side-project, grew into an outright monster, but I love it! I love this story so fucking much, it breaks my heart from time to time (and that’ll only get worse), but I really think it’s worth the trouble. It’s only November 9th, and already I’m closing in on 50.000 words. In fact, with the rate I’m going, I’ll get there tomorrow. In 9 days I have written exactly 44.763 words. Wow. I cannot believe it.

On the other hand, I have no school, no job, and close to no social life. My brain turns to mush at least once a day, where I have to force myself away from the computer, go for a walk and get some fresh air. And when I get back? Well I sit down and I write some more. Of course I do. I’m obsessed with reaching this insane goal, and I really think I can do it. Sometimes I simply stop understanding words, like it’s complete gibberish, and I might as well be trying to write a novel in Russian. It’s almost surreal, this is by far the hardest task I have ever taken upon myself, but fuck I love it! If nothing gets in my way, I’ll definitely be doing NaNo again next year, and the year after that, and you probably get where I’m going with this.

My advice to anyone wishing to do NaNo though? Well, don’t do what I do. What I do is borderline insane, and cannot be recommended to anyone. I survive off caffeine and nicotine, I sleep as little as I can get away with, and I barely leave the apartment. It’s not a healthy way of doing anything, so if you should ever do NaNo, don’t do it like this. Seriously. It might turn out incredibly rewarding to me, to have written an entire (really long) novel in 30 days, but still… It’s really not very healthy.

Now though, it’s past my bedtime. At least if I want to catch just a little amount of sleep, before getting up early, and repeat the entire process. Work, work, fuck damn it, I love my work!