NaNoWriMo – a Confession

I have a NaNoWriMo confession to make. Except I should call it a “post-” NaNoWriMo confession, since it concerns what happened not during last year’s Nanowrimo, but later on, in the aftermath.

I’d had 30 days of good writing, rich output that ultimately yielded seven “first draft” chapters of a new novel.

Then I stalled.

Not only did I stall, I identified exactly what was happening. I blogged about it , and offered advice on how to deal with it. I even had the huzpah to post my cleaned-up first draft chapters, implicitly promising more.

But the physician failed to heal himself: I ignored my own advice, and as of now, Regenerating Jeff remains stalled at Chapter 8.

Enter NaNoWriMo 2008, which comes around as regularly (thank god) as Springtime, holding out its annual promise of regeneration, redemption, renewal.

I’ve observed that NaNoWriMo’s flexibility lets it be whatever you want or need it to be. This year, what I need is to “finish” that novel. So here’s my pledge:

I will win NaNoWriMo again, as I did last year – and I will complete the first draft of Regenerating Jeff. Yes, I pledge to break the back of this project–or come so close to finishing I’ll know my ending well enough to see it clearly in the near distance.

Follow my progress here, or if you’re doing NaNoWroMo too, feel free to sign on as one of my “buddies,” and we’ll take the trip together.