Sure. You can go and learn how to write something. You can learn about the subject you’re writing about. You can investigate. You can work on your craft.
And you can get stuck, and not know what happens next, and wait until you do.
And you can discover that showrunning a tv show you’ve written takes all of your time, and put the novel you’ve been writing to sleep knowing that you won’t be waking it up and carrying on with chapter four until about 20 months have passed.
There aren’t any rules. I wrote a first draft of a first chapter of The Graveyard Book when I was 24, in 1985, and wrote the book between 2004 and the end of 2007. I started Coraline in 1990ish, stopped when I moved to the US in 1992, and finished it in 2000.
Me as a child: *creates an entire complex dystopian dungeon story with a vet clinic set and a couple toys with character development, conflict, and an edge-of-your-seat finale*
Me now, as a writer: *clinks two characters together* hehe they’re kissing
the thing isyour writing session might not be fun or easy or fruitful, but it isalways successful. every time you write, you are making progress. you’re thinking about your story, you’re thinking about your writing, and most importantly: you’re writing. just remember that, even if you don’t reach your goals, your writing session will be a success.
Y’know, NaNoWriMo isn’t actually about getting 50,000 words in 30 days
Yeah, that’s the Goal – but it’s not what it’s about
NaNoWriMo is about sitting down, starting a project, and learning to manage that project and keep going even when it gets hard
it’s about building skills and forming habits and developing discipline and learning more about yourself as a creator so you can get a sense for what writing methods do/don’t work for you
its about trying things – about making discoveries and making mistakes, and about making progress without getting mired in the minutia so you end the month with more words than you had when you started
It’s framed like a contest ‘cause goals and prizes make things fun, but you’re only really playing against yourself
50,000 words is only a target to shoot for ‘cause without a target it’s pretty hard to practice your aim
It is, and I cannot stress this seriously enough, also about making the people in your life respect your writing time.
a character’s favorite vehicle, technology, coat, etc.
a pleasant night
hair, skin tone, clothing, etc. of a good person
undisturbed water of a lake
the case/container of something important
valued wood, furniture, art
velvet
Think to burn, to infect, to bleach vs. to enrich, to protect, to be of substance.
*slams reblog like the fist of an angry god*
the politics of light and dark are everywhere in our vocabulary…psa to writers: subvert this, reveal whiteness and lightness as sometimes artificial and violent, and darkness as healing, the unknown as natural
Molly's Monsters 