good writing takes time

Old book, quill and bottle of black ink on old wooden chairThis is why I will never participate in NaNoWriMo.

Ever.

A few months back I got an email from a lady who was in charge of the advertising for a local home and garden show. She’d gotten my name from the editor of my local paper, who I’ve written for before. She needed a writer for some twelve to fifteen articles for a special tab on the show’s vendors that would appear in the paper just prior to the event.

Of course I said yes.

In the following weeks she gave me four names. I began making phone calls, trying to set up interviews and schedule photo shoots. I accomplished these and still hadn’t heard from her about the rest of the vendors. I assumed I would have plenty of time.

I was wrong. Continue reading

nanonano

While everyone else in the blogosphere is concerned with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), inexperienced bloggers like me just want write. We nonconformists recognize that, even if we could pump out 50,000 words in 30 days, most of those words would suck. Not to mention we have other lives. I have not yet achieved my dream of being able to sit at my computer all day with nothing else on my plate but to write, write, write.

Maybe someday.

Not that I’m opposed to NaNoWriMo. I think it’s a great idea: Write for a cause. Work cooperatively. World peace. All that.

It’s just . . .

Personally, I’d rather work on attainable goals. Take the GRE, figure out grad school, freelance (I’ve got my first freelance article coming out this week!), exercise, write whatever I want whenever I want. I’ll bet you have responsibilities, too. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Dickens never wrote for NaNoWriMo? How about Shakespeare? Tolkien? Austen? Homer?

That’s what I thought.