Messina’s article was an eye-widener!

It occurred to me, whilst I was digesting it, that we are all of us exposed on a daily basis to high-achievers and experts by the medium of television, leading us to believe in a distorted view of what is ‘normal.’

How many of us have watch ‘the perfect take’ in a movie and tried (when no-one is watching) to replicate the action – whether it be tossing a bowler hat onto a stand or even pouring out a drink – only for it to look shambolic?

Watch the out-takes…even actors get it wrong over and over and over again. None of us are perfect, so don’t try to be.

It’s only with practise (and some clever editing) that we can get it mostly rite.

To participate, sign up here for a NaNoWriMo profile: http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/register.

Here is the 10-step process they recommend: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/hownanoworks.

For more information, visit: http://www.nanowrimo.org.

For some writers, however, editing through the “shitty” first draft while writing it is what causes them to never get the book finished. In this case, I recommend just getting the writing down on the page.

@Wendy Yes! NaNoWriMo is one of the best writing events of the year! Stay tuned to this blog for full coverage of this year’s NaNoWriMo event.

I know from experience to push through and not revise the first few chapters until I’m at least 100 pages into the story. By then, I’ve settled into the story and can see how it’s beginning to evolve. Since I do tend to try to always revise to make it better (oddly, I’ve never said the story was crappy and tried to revise for that reason), I look for my trigger points. I know that I’m most vulnerable to unnecessary revision in the first 100 pages. If I get stuck, I tend to wander back and start tweaking words. During that phase, I keep the chapters in separate files so all I see is the one chapter, not the whole thing. That helps cut down on the tweaking.