Monday, November 14, 2011

MMWUC - The Anti-NANOWRIMO

I'm having this incredible tussle with the evil internal editor (EIE). I write, and the EIE twists my words and makes the all sound like fingernails across the blackboard in school. "They vill be edited. And they vill be edited, now," is the commanding voice. I fight. Honest, I do. But yesterday, the muse, so patient, so kind, so full of ideas, and sometimes baloney, finally spoke up. "SHUT UP!" She offered a compromise. For the next twelve months the EIE will leave me alone, then, during NANOWRIMO 2012, the EIE is in charge.

So, as long as the EIE can play nice as of Monday, next NANOWRIMO is the anti-nanowrimo. I'm to offer up 112,327 (don't ask how we came up with that number) words, and the EIE has as a goal, the opportunity to cut 50,000 words out of that novel of 112K+ words in one month. We're all happy for now.

So, what kind of crazy deals do you make with your internal and external demons to get a story completed?

1 comment:

Guilie Castillo said...

LOL, Rick. Yeah, I have an unruly EIE too, but of course I'm much less experienced than you, so this--NaNo--is my first locking of horns with him. Her. She must be a Her--none other than a woman could be so nitpicky, right?

Kidding aside, though, I've found the NaNo exercise VERY illuminating for EIE educational purposes. I wrote my first novel with a mixture of editing and writing that let absolutely nowhere, because I had to type "The End" in order to get the full story arc, and once I did, I realized that 70% of the editing I'd done so far was not just useless but detrimental. So... Quieting that EIE is of huge value to me.

Good luck with anti-nanowrimo. If you choose to do it during another month of the year, I'll happily join you :)