Mad Pulp Ass-Kicking

Despite my brave words last week, I haven’t stuck with NaNoWriMo as much as I would’ve liked.

The irony of it all is that the thing driving me (or most anyone) to do NaNo is the thing keeping me from it, namely the desire to write and get my shit out there. So, when I should’ve been NaNo-ing for the past few days, I’ve been doing the following…

• Submitted two short-stories (one of which was rejected after one frakking day, but oh well–on to the next market)
• Prepping two more for final submission (just a few MS tweaks according to particular market specifications)
• Going through my published and unpublished stuff as potential entries for a short-short chapbook contest…
• …and to facilitate writing more material for the contest, I’ve reacquainted myself with the flash fiction section of the Zoetrope Virtual Studio. (Even scored myself an invite to a private office, where all the fun of Zoe really takes place!)
• Preparing to run into some well-known authors at Astronomicon 11, if I can steel my resolve.

I’m not saying I’ve given up on NaNo entirely. What I am saying is that it’s lower on the priority list than it was. I realized that my reasons going into it this year were somewhat faulty. I wanted an excuse to generate material, even though I had a backlog of stuff and a virtual notebook full of more ideas than I could ever use. I wanted that mad NaNo rush to get it all down. But why? For it’s own sake? That’s a good enough reason for most NaNo’ers but not for me, not this year.

I’ve been following Bill Cunningham’s (d.b.a. The Mad Pulp Bastard) Pulp 2.0 blog for quite awhile, before I ever followed him on Twitter. And the other day, he gave me some advice as I twitter-pondered aloud about a story of mine which was bought and paid for, but never published…

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And the Mad Pulp Bastard responded…

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Now, the particular advice itself isn’t as important as the spirit of it. The spirit of it said to me, Don, just get your shit out there.

There was a point where NaNoWriMo was a particular means to a particular end for me, and it served that end very ,very well. Then. Now, I know that finer, more experienced, and more published writers are doing it right this very second, but at this stage of the game–my game–it doesn’t serve my ultimate end. Oh, I’ll dabble and throw some words into the wordcount meter, to be sure. But if I don’t hit 50k words, then meh. I’d rather put more effort into building on my 2009 publications and get a head start on 2010!