The Rebel Pen: A Non-Fiction Writer Joins NaNoWriMo

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

In November, I am continuing to participate in the Two Pages-a-Day writing challenge.  And I must have been abducted by aliens who replaced my brain with rocks, because I’m also doing NaNoWriMo for the first time.  Someone get this girl a drink!!

I

hate writing.  

But I hate not writing even more.

If I don’t write, everything I feel and experience and think just bubbles inside.  Like psychological magma.  And man, you do not want to be around if that baby ever blows its top!

You think artists and writers are bat-sh#@ crazy?!  Imagine how we would be if we didn’t channel our passion into our art!

Dude.

Fortune and Fame in Thirty Days

Ms. Procrastinator here didn’t sign up for NaNoWriMo until yesterday.  So it’s technically twenty-six days to my day in the sun.  I wasn’t going to sign up at all (and not because I super sane or anything), but my writing buddy Angie said I could be a rebel NaNoWriMo-er.  Rilke only knows, I needed some challenge that kept me accountable.  Complete with a word count for all and sundry to see.   

Too bad there isn’t an app that installs a fairy (you know, the scary kind) in the computer that pops out and whacks you on the head and says: “You  haven’t written today!  Write or I’ll turn you into a newt!”

Image Credit: Dreamies

I got better.

So here I am, writing a book of essays ~ definitely not a novel.  And with a title so snarky that I’m not brave enough to publish it yet.  The downside of friends and family knowing what your pen name is.  I could wait until everyone I know is dead, but I’m really not that patient.

And massacres are messy.

The End Is Near!

My goal for November is the same as it was for every month this year: to write every day.  But I need an incentive.  Usually that incentive is a blog challenge: nothing better than being mortified by forgetting to post during a thirty day challenge.  Your failure is there for everyone to see!

Some classroom lessons are difficult to overcome.  Pink Floyd plays in the background.

NaNoWriMo is a little different ~ no posts to watch for.  But there is a word count tracker.  And the best thing is, it tells you how many more words you have to go, when you’ll finish the book, and how many words you have to write per day in order to get there.  It’s Microsoft Project for writers.

Oh joy.  Now everyone can see how non-productive I can be!

Don’t rain on your own parade, La Belle!  Fine. This is a great way to keep the writerly fires burning, make new writerly friends, and give and receive great writerly advice and encouragement.

If only that fairy app could make the words magically appear. . .

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Did you sign up for NaNoWriMo too?  Let’s be buddies!