Me First, Then You

This blog entry isn't for you; it's for me. I'll explain that in a bit.

I'm what the folks over at NaNoWriMo call a "one day novelist." It sounds kind-a fancy – like maybe someone who can whip out a novel in a day – but it's really their shorthand to characterize all the people who frequently have the thought "one day, I think it'd be cool to write a novel." So, last year, after several of my friends participated in NaNoWriMo's "write a novel" challenge, I thought "that sounds kind of fun; I should do that, next year", and I went over to their site and entered an email address to be reminded when this year's 50,000-word challenge came around. Both before that time and since, I've taken a few dabbles at "my novel", and written a few scenes.

Yesterday, I got the reminder mail. I went to their site, started poking around, and started getting excited about the idea of getting going.

Then I started thinking about what was involved. 50,000 words in a month is ~2000 words a day, with the occasional day-off (I know, you're supposed to write EVERY day – but there are very few things that I do that I don't occasionally skip a day, and I know myself too well to think I wouldn't take a break) and maybe a few days where you don't quite hit 2000. So then I went to look at a few example entries in blogs that I enjoy, to get a sense of how much 2000 words was and saw that they were in the 2000-word range, and THAT didn't seem so terribly hard, so then I opened up my novel, on which I've been dabbling for over a year, and did a word-count.

I'm embarrassed to publish the actual number, but let's just say that the realization of how small my little pride & joy was left me feeling a bit disappointed. Ok, fine: it was just over sixteen-hundred words. In just over a year.

Ouch.

Ok, fine – so I'm a bit of a procrastinator; I knew that about myself. Plus, I'm a tad nit-picky, and that makes me procrastinate more, as I haven't yet internalized the Nano-concept of "write ANYTHING, even if it's junk. Worry about quality later; for now, you need to just work-out your writing muscle." Then I got to thinking about these other cool blogs, and decided maybe I could do that as a sort of "pre-warm-up" exercise. I've always thought about blogging anyway so, while the 10s of 1000s of other Nano-writers are slaving away staying up until all hours of the night trying to bash out 50k-words in 30 days, I'm going to try to kick-off a blog and stick to it.

I actually DO have some kind-of neat ideas, I think, so it may actually turn into something worthwhile.

But that's not THIS post. THIS post is for me. It's my "statement of intent." If I just tell myself "I should start a blog", I'll never get around to it. But, somehow, having posted a billboard where everyone can see it (and the fact that nobody probably read it doesn't actually matter so much as that the post is published), then I'll actually "have to" make time & do it. That's THIS post.

Initially, my goal is to just bang-out 300-1000 words one to three times per week on whatever suits my fancy. In these initial posts, my main goals will be (a) to write regularly (b) to "find my voice" (including pick a format, develop a style, etc.) (c) diddle around with various blogging software, which will probably be used as an excuse to procrastinate on the actual writing and (d) write about my procrastination enough times that it becomes a matter of pride for me to actually DO goals a-c. Later, after a-d settle-in, I hope to be able to explore various relevant topics in greater detail, probably something in the ~2500 words 2-3x/week range. We'll see how that goes, after this first part.

So, if you're interested in watching me document my struggles with laziness and yet-another-net-idiot's stream-of-consciousness blog, feel free to read these first few entries. But they're not for you, they're for me. When I decide to post my first "real" entry, I'll label it something like "Grand Opening!", or some such. From that point on, the posts will be "for you", in the sense that I hope to be sharing some useful insight that helps others see some relevant issue in some new way that makes Everything Better For Everybody.

"...Or something like that."

Hey, almost 800 words in about 15 minutes, just talking about how hard it is to bang out words – piece o' cake!