Neil Gaiman's Pep Talk, Sort Of

This week I'm blogging over at What Women Write about NaNo
and Neil Gaiman. He's posted a great Pep Talk at NaNoWriMo's Web site.

It turns out, keeping up with this blog as well as the other is taking a toll on my blog writing. Don't give up on me, though, I hope to be back to blogging regularly soon. In the meantime, enjoy Neil's inspiring message for writers.

Struggling

This essay by John Dalton inspired me today. It reminded me that there's no shame in being a struggling writer, or a writer struggling to get the words right. He wrote and rewrote his first novel, Heaven Lake, over eight years and received starred reviews when it debuted. He's now writing his second.

WOAO

I'm doing a version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with my writing partners at What Women Write. We've all committed to various output (or not) and we've renamed it accordingly. NaNo participants write a 50,000 word draft novel.

I know that figure is unrealistic for the November I have planned this year. And I also don't want to start a new novel since I'm 30,000 words into my WIP. I'm not actually going to officially sign up, but I'll say it here so I can be accountable: My goal is 30,000 words on my WIP. So, that will get me to 60,000, I'll write the rest (about 20,000) in December and then take January, February and March to revise. That's my plan.

It's November 2 and I've written 1,276 words. 724 to go for tonight to be on track. Wish me luck.

Any of you also doing NaNo? Or joining our WWW group for WOAO?