NaNo Begins Anew

Welcome to NaNo 2006! I've been wanting to be here for over a month, but now that we're here I'm already being taken down by nerves. It's early yet (just 11:04AM out here in the PST), so there is time to write now as well as later (I'm looking more at later). So far I'm at 287 words. It's a success, though that's not very much for eleven hours (six of which I was sleeping). I started right off at 12:01AM. In the years I've been participating in NaNo I've never have had the chance to do that before. When I was poised on the couch, ready to write, my mom gave me a starting trumpet call, like the one that is played at the horse races. I guess I've been talking about the NaNo a lot because she even said the NaNoWriMo has begun.

I'm going to be shooting for 2500 words today. That's the amount of words Chris Baty suggests. I'm taking his word for it. :D

Though all of you who are registered over at NaNoWriMo already got this letter, I want to highlight a paragraph Baty says:

As someone who has done NaNoWriMo for eight years now, I can tell you this: Novels are not written by novelists. Novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels. Whatever your writing experience, you have a book in you that only you can write. And November is a beautiful month to get it written.

Permission to write novels. That's something I have a difficult time doing. I have trouble with allowing myself to write anything. This seems to be a problem for many writers. My friend cassikat was expressing the same trouble the other day. If I allow myself to write what I feel, what only I can write (God, now I feel like I'm in Natasha Bedingfield's song), then I'll write. It took me some time to be okay with that for last NaNo. I need to find that drive and allowance again.