A Matter of Perspective

We may never hear the sound of a cough the same way again. . . Admit it. If you have had to go out in public over the past couple of weeks and you heard someone cough or sneeze, you turned and looked to see who it was. You probably also got a look of disgust on your face. You may have even thought of the best way to entirely circumvent shopping at all just to get away from the possible “Coronavirus Carrier.” But guess what? That is all I am going to say right now. Instead I am going to talk about Camp NaNoWriMo! Yep, it is that wonderful time of the year again. That time when all of us would-be novelists pull out our dusty old ideas or even our fragile new ideas and do our best to write 50,000 words on our project. Camp NaNoWriMo (which means National Novel Writing Month) is a little different than the traditional NaNoWriMo held in November in that you can write or create any project of any length during camp. It’s a virtual camp and has been for the past several years so it fits right in with all the other “virtual” things we as a nation/planet have been doing for the past few weeks. It is just you and your computer, pen/pencil, paper, stone tablet or whatever you choose to write upon. It is that fabled idea that we all have “the great American novel” within us just trying to find a way out. I have taken the “liberty” of getting a bit of a headstart on my project as I just took up where I left off on my newest novel that I started in November. I am up to almost 7000 words now which is an additional 2000 words more than I had in November. I am really hoping that I am able to get my 50,000 word goal completed this April. I have 28 more days to go as of this writing. For me to remain on track, I need to write another 1484 words today. That seems like a lot, but I think I can handle it. Speaking of handling things.... I am hoping that this spring someone will contact me to do some “virtual” write-ins. I might do a few days on Facebook Live, although I think they will be rather boring just watching me type... I could yell at the dog and cat a few times just to spice things up, but then I might get arrested! Anyway, I just want to give anyone the opportunity to join me in a virtual write-in if you are interested. You can be in your writing space and I will be in mine and we will just write our guts out trying to make sense of whatever world we are creating. In order to write a 50,000 word book in 30 days, one has to write 1667 words daily. It can be done. In fact, there have been people who have written their NaNoWriMo novels in less than a week! So, if we gave them the benefit of seven days, that would mean those people wrote approximately 7142 words per day. Let me put this into perspective for you—as of this word, I have written 549 words. That is a lot of words! I am happier with the prospect of writing 1667. I do really well when I don’t think about the word count. When I get myself all wound up thinking about words, I can barely eke out 500 in an hour. However, when I let myself go and just write, I can knock out 1667 in less than an hour. Trust me, this can be done. It isn’t just about meeting the challenge, it is also about the sense of accomplishment that a person feels upon completing a novel. I have written several (unpublished). I know what it feels like to finish one. Someday soon, I will, with hope, also know what having one published feels like. So, please contact me at: karin@karinnauber.com if you want to join me in this writing adventure. We can “virtually” share our ups and downs and daily word counts. By the way, this is what 722 words looks like. I’m almost halfway there and it only took me 20 minutes!