IWSG: The Post-NaNo blues

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the link and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. I encourage everyone to visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.

I just finished NaNoWriMo... wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. You'd think that would make me proud and happy. And it does, on one level. But my insecurity comes from the knowledge that I have SO much revision work to do to even make those 50,000 words legible! I'm standing at the bottom of Revision Mountain and the climb up looks pretty daunting.

I'm going to put it away for a little while and see how I feel about it after that.

Not to mention I don't know what to do with myself now. I love the NaNo community, but it's so fleeting. 30 days fly by when you have a common purpose with so many others. I already miss all my NaNo friends.

Did any of you do NaNo this year? How did you do?

Insecure Writers Support Group: NaNoWriMo post

Hi everyone! It's that time again, time for Insecure Writers Support Group. If you don't know what IWSG is, please pop on over to this link for an explanation, and when you realize it's the one thing you've been missing in your writing life, JOIN US!!

So in case anyone is keeping score, I've started off with a bang for NaNoWriMo this year. Killing it! Woot! Of course, it's only day five. And that's why I'm so eager to crush my word count now...because I'm afraid of the slump...the point at which I lose steam, run out of ideas, and let the whole thing fall to pieces.

I'm a pantster by nature. I can't help it. I tried outlining the Camp NaNo project I worked on this summer and it jumped right off the map and made its own direction...and then it fell to pieces. Again.

All these false starts are starting to give me heartburn! I want to finish something, but I keep losing steam and moving on to the next thing, with only the barest sliver of hope that I'll ever return to revise/add to/complete a project.

This current novel has no point at all so far, other than documenting daily life of the main character. I'm waiting to see if something exciting happens, that I can then doctor up in revisions, and hoping that we make it that far.

Anyone else out there doing NaNo this time around?