Those of you who know me (which is most of you since I only recently exposed this site in any kind-of public arena) know how big of a deal NaNoWriMo was for me last year. To this day it remains the largest accomplishment I've ever had writing-wise.
Why? Because I have the most active inner critic of anyone I've ever met in my life- and I've met a lot of people with some pretty damned loud inner critics. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that my inner critic could easily contend for the world title. So shutting that up long enough to produce anything of length is a massive ordeal.
Yet, miraculously, I did it. I shut it up long enough to pound out over 50k words. Over 70k words, actually. And when I did allow myself to go back and look at it I found I still wanted to keep writing. I may even revisit it and try to complete the damned thing some day- how crazy is that?
Needless to say, it was big deal in the life of Bev. As is this NaNoWriMo. Now I start fresh with a different story, different genre, different characters, different world, and a different writer. I can only hope that all of the lessons I learned from last year's experience will be quickly remembered and push me forward in a progressive way.
I'm not hoping to write the next great American novel. I am completely expecting a giant, steaming pile of you-know-what with a few precious nuggets stuck in like corn kernels. I'm expecting to make mistakes, to write poorly- to suck, for all intensive purposes. But my wish is that I will suck in new and different ways by making new and different mistakes. Because one of the lessons I learned is that that, and not the production of a really good final product, is what growth is all about.
So, without further ado, let the sucking begin!
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