NaNoWriMo has begun!

Wrote 2,500 words of Evil's True Form yesterday. It felt wonderful to be writing new stuff again! I opened the book with about three paragraphs of background before *SLAM* the main character is plunged into the thick of it. I only dared to slow down after the end of the first scene, to let my MC (Botulf) come to terms with the fact that he only has two days to live.

Here's something, though. Traditionally, my brother has always read my books as I write them, every night. But last night he told me that the opening felt "strange". Although that's the kind of comment I would welcome in the rewrites, I don't need to hear it right now. The last thing you need during NaNo is criticism. It will squash your enthusiasm like a bug. Therefore, he's going to write his comments down in a computer file ... and I won't read them until I'm ready to.

NaNoWriMo isn't about creating something perfect straight off. It's about creating something fun, something spontaneous. If you like what you wrote afterwards, then you can work on it--but if not, what have you lost? A month of you time? Wrong: even if you don't develop the material, you have gained a month's worth of writing experience, and that is a precious thing.

So, my fellow Wrimos: don't let well-meaning friends or relatives tell you what to do at this point. Get stuck in and write stuff. Worry about details later.

(Endnote: My Back To School classes on Anglo-Saxon Warfare are now showing at Forward Motion. You can find them in the Back To School forum, under November 2004. The first class was posted last night.)