The concept of my early week posts under the guise of The Wayward Herald is to highlight interesting blog posts and other information I’ve encountered from the blogosphere in the prior week. But these days, there’s been a dearth of interesting posts, and I attribute that to NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – which takes place every November.
I follow a ton of writers’ blogs. But if the authors of those blogs are devoting all their time to NaNoWriMo, that explains why there may not be a lot of interesting stuff out there right now. After all, who can draft good blog posts when you’re trying to write 50,000 words in a 30-day time frame? Maybe The Wayward Herald should take the month of November off, sort of like a sabbatical.
I’ve never done NaNoWriMo. I’m fearful that I’d crank out a bunch of junk that would need endless amounts of revision. My personal writing style is a bit more deliberative. I outline my novels before I write them. (For those interested, I am fairly devoted to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! and John Truby’s The Anatomy of a Story.) And, as an author of historical fiction, I usually conduct a ton of research before I even begin my outlining. Sometimes this research can take several months, or more. This isn’t really conducive to NaNoWriMo unless you’ve finished the bulk of your research by Halloween.
Nevertheless, this week, I tip my cap to those devoted enough to embark on NaNoWriMo – may you fare well and prosper!