Preparing for National Novel Writing Month
Last year, I hit 40k. Not in income, alas, but in the November novel writing event, known as NaNoWriMo . Produced by NaNo bugs, of course (for those of you with elementary school children obsessed with the newest gadget...) The goal was 50k, which means filling about four 8.5x11 sheets of paper per day. That's a lot. I wasn't too disappointed not to have hit the limit, however, because I did something that I find pretty challenging. Namely, I resolved the story. After rewriting the story, and adding another 6k, I asked my friend Sarah to beta read the short novel. She confirmed my fear, that I never let anything really bad happen to my characters. No suspense. No pain. Only resolution. I'm now in a second rewrite. So this year I am trying to allow bad things to happen. This is counterintuitive. I spend my whole life trying to make sure bad things don't happen. Why would I intentionally make bad things happen to people I like? I guess because I want to prove that t