As a general rule, there’s almost always time to ramble about whatever crosses my mind on here, but when I’ve only got half an hour to do it before hitting the deadline of the end of the day… at this rate, all I can say is I’m glad I skipped out on NaNoWriMo. Trying to write, what, a couple thousand words in the course of maybe two hours assuming I remember early enough? Rumor has it that novels are supposed to have a plot. If I’m doing it during crunch time, not so much.
In a way, this is kinda strange. Given how many papers I wrote during the last few hours back in college, you’d think I’d be comfortable with something as simple as “I have to pound out a couple paragraphs in 30 minutes.” Maybe it’s because I could always rely on all-nighters. Yes, I pulled those once in a while. Hell, I did that for my application essays for Augsburg, but in that case, I already had some idea of what I wanted to write, I just needed to put it down on paper. And then edit it. And then rewrite it because it sucked. Hmmm… maybe not that much different than college after all. Maybe I’m just getting mentally prepared to be back in school again.
Doing NaBloPoMo last month really trained me to start looking for topics to write about in every little happening of every day, everywhere. I, too, would sometimes be sitting at my computer, close to midnight, frantically trying to meet my deadline. Good rule of thumb? Get it out of the way with early in the day. It was hard for me b/c I was busy at work, but sometimes even jotting down part of a post here and there during quick breaks helped. Keep it up– more than halfway there! 🙂