Saturday, October 21, 2006

I got my pencil...

now gimme something to write on.

Dust off your AST PowerExec laptop and your fancy clip-on trackball.

Less than two weeks until another installment of NaNoWriMo.

For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. You get 30 days to eat turkey, visit the in-laws, shop for Christmas, and somehow hack out a 50,000 word novel.

I did it last year. I actually finished a book for the first time in I dunno how many false starts.

This year leaves me wondering if I should even bother -- let's compare:

Last year I had a stupid job which had me home most of the time.
Last year I had a pregnant wife who also wrote a novel while she continued being pregnant.
Last year I had a semi-fresh idea which I wasn't afraid to explore.

This year I have NO TIME. None. Time is extinct as far as I'm concerned.
This year we have a baby who requires LOTS OF ATTENTION. Giving attention to a baby is time consuming. Back up a few sentences if you forgot how much time is available.
This year I have a new slant on an old idea, but I'm scared of it because I've started and restarted it several times over the years and it never goes anywhere.

So yeah, write a book. Maybe I'll read it in my spare time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're dis-heartening my!! I can't do it this year, I already said I'm not doing it this year because we have too many things to do to get ready for a baby. But I said, "I'm going to do it next year when my wife isn't pregnant." NOW YOU'RE BREAKING MY SLED.

The probble now isn't so much that I have to do shit to get ready for a baby, it's that I need to not be telling my pregnant wife that I'll be unavailable for everything for hours at a time. For some reason I figure I can do that when there's a baby around.

I don't know what crack I'm smoking.