me not doing NaNo

[la_belle_laide]

It's not like I stopped writing, either. It's just that I got a little wigged out by getting that last crit on Qualia, esp. on the query letter which is still so flawed - and I am still so blind. I need to back away slowly.

NaNo came along, and as usual, I didn't participate. Why? I don't know. It's 50K words in a month, right?

Well, like I said, I've been writing crappy stories for the last three weeks. Last week alone, I wrote a novella, 27K. It took me four days in between school and my path paper (that I'm not really doing yet.) Before that, 22K and before that, 8K. They were all interconnected, different parts to the same story. That's 57K words in three weeks.

50K words in a month is easy if you type fast enough - I didn't even realize I'd banged these out till I word-counted them tonight.

I guess I could pretend I did NaNo?

Shoot, I'm not saying anything I wrote was any good and that's been part of the charm for me. They were fanfics, all right, so what, wanna fight about it? I wrote them all anonymously. I ran back to my favorite character archetypes and easy storylines that just flow naturally out of me. Youthful, unexpected assassins, sapiosexual cat burglars, road-trip crime adventures, pages of snarky dialogue. Very light on actual plot TBH, and completely bursting with my own self-indulgence. I swear I hardly used an active voice in any of them. It's not like I ran around with my dangling participles hanging out (I would never!) and all the basics are still fairly sound no matter what I write BECUZ I WAS TAUGHT GUD, but I know enough to realize when something actually is not up to standard in The Real World.

I'd forgotten how easy fandom is; how much readers enjoy a decent fanwork. Because I know that I enjoy one. I'd forgotten how good it feels to be told "this made my night" instead of, "Wow, redo this entire thing." Now honestly, I love the "redo this entire thing" angle, because I like knowing what I have to do to do be better, to learn, and to be a success. I enjoy the work and I really love the results.

It's like working out for months and months and getting really fit, and then one weekend you just need to sit down and eat ice cream and not leave your bed. That's what these novellas and the comments I received for them did/are doing for me. They are my ice cream in bed phase. I'll get back into shape soon.


And I realize that eventually I'm going to have to go back to Qualia (and the crits I owe) and beg forgiveness for this ridiculous and honestly pointless transgression.

Although one could argue that nothing enjoyable and harmless is really pointless? I feel some amount of guilt over having fun with this. But maybe it's what I need right now? Writing is all, like, hard and stuff. Would hate to feel too discouraged.

Excuses excuses.

I also just sat and read failblog for an hour instead of working on that aforementioned path paper. I'm like, "It's all right here!" *tapping my head* "The rest is just scribbling and bibbling."

And the school only wants 8 pages of me at least, but most good papers are 14-20. Seriously, that's it? I could give you 40 if you want.

Quantity does not = quality though; that is in fact my earlier point. At least in my case. It'd be really cool if I could bang out 57K of quality writing in that short a time, but lookit: Qualia's been with me for years and it's still buggy.

I don't even know what I'm babbling about! I'm going to watch Family Guy and then a movie and then go to bed and sleep till 10 tomorrow. :)