Since I'm a person of many interests, cursed with a somewhat short attention span, deadlines are good for me. Publicly announcing my deadline on a particular project is even better, since it creates accountablility, even if embarrassment is the only consequence.
After considering several post-retirement careers, I've settled on writing. It's something I've always enjoyed, and it doesn't take a lot of motivation for me to sit at the keyboard and write. Doing it in a focused and disciplined manner has been my main challenge. I've been submitting short stories to publications regularly over the past few months, have been ruminating on several ideas for novels, and have even written a few chapters of two of those novels.
But I needed something to jolt me into creating a complete first draft of a novel. I found an event that fits the bill.
David Seah wrote a post on his blog entitled National Novel Writing Month 2012. It described a yearly international event whereby aspiring writers encourage and pressure fellow participants to write the rough draft of a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Since November is fast approaching, and I've made a committment to myself to write daily anyhow, I decided to take the plunge, and officially enter the event.
If you are an aspiring novelist, and need something to focus your effort, and create a structured deadline for yourself, this may be the event for you. The official site is http://www.nanowrimo.org.
So stop fantasizing about that novel, and start writing. I intend to do short progess reports on my own effort through the month of November.
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