Easy Beauty

Perhaps it goes without saying that I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I do it practically every year. But this year it's a bit more fun, because I'm participating with Seve's class. Seve not only teaches theatre, but creative writing, and every semester his classes participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo in November, and Camp NaNaWriMo in April).

Even though I often "win" NaNo every time I participate, I never necessarily love the product I end up with. 2010's effort just didn't turn out how I wanted . . . I'm usually an advocate for not taking a NaNo too seriously while writing it; it'll make it too hard to reach your word count each day. Some days you really do just end up writing a bunch of crap, and it can dishearten the effort more than if you just hadn't written anything at all.

But this year I'm breaking a few rules. Breaking my own rule of not taking myself too seriously, and breaking the usual NaNo rule of "starting fresh:" I'm finishing a NaNo I started back in 2007. This was the year I taught English abroad in China, and I convinced my entire volunteer group to participate in NaNo too. My roommate and I threw ourselves into the process and managed to get our manuscripts up to 30,000--pretty good considering we were busy teaching English/exploring China everyday. Another girl wrote a funny retelling of all the adventures we shared in China, and another wrote a hilarious retelling of Twilight substituting all of our names for the original characters (I was Alice).

The pictures above are of some literary magazines I picked up in China, called "Top Novel." I've never been able to read them, obviously, but my native coordinator informed me they were full of short stories, serials, and poetry. She translated a few for me. They're also filled with beautiful artwork and comics. Anyway, it was from these that I drafted my 2007 NaNo idea. The illustrations were just so beautiful, so I invented a story of what I thought they could be about.

It's six years since I bothered to read that story, but in February of this year I finally pulled it up. And I  . . . loved it? It's an embarrassing teen romance, really quirky and magical realism-ish, but whatever, I love it. I've decided I owe it to myself to finish it.

Anyway, this month, as a way to pep myself up to finish, I'll be blogging about my time in China and various topics related to Easy Beauty.

Participating in NaNo this month? Become my writing buddy here. If you're struggling with your own NaNo, Nathan Bransford (my favorite ex-literary agent blogger) wrote a great book with some relevant-for-trying-to-write-and-publish-a-novel-in-2013 tips here. And when you're done checking that out, watch this video because I really like it.