NaNoWriMo, Mercury Retrograde and Lessons Learned

"Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away." - Charles Caleb Colton

I spent the whole month of November taking part in the NaNoWriMo challenge where the aim is, hmmm it's probably better if I let them tell you...

"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel by November 30. Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output."

Now I, on a whim, signed up for this challenge!
With no ideas, no plot, and no experience of writing anything longer than a blog post!

The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to get yourself a rough draft. To enable you to put down the bones of your story, so that you end up with a body of words to work from. They tell you not to read or edit it as you go, just to write and that is exactly what I did.

I can see their point that the endless revision and rewriting and inevitable procrastination would slow you down. As they say, the time for that is afterwards.

I managed to complete the challenge!

In fact I went on to write 72,300 words in 30 days. I finished on the 30th November and did as they suggested and left it alone for a while.

Now I am preparing to get it out and use the mercury retrograde period to do what needs to be done next, rereading, revision and rewriting.

What a perfect use of a mercury retrograde!

I am going to be making sure that I respect the energy of the mercury retrograde and make sure to take frequent back ups of everything I write too!

A Mercury retrograde tale. . .

I must admit I didn't used to take much notice of the mercury retrograde period until last year where my partner was looking for another car.

Now, I thought to myself, it isn't really a good idea to buy another car while mercury is retrograde. In fact I may have even mentioned it aloud and said it would be much better to wait until mercury went direct, but I didn't push the fact and my partner with his sun and mars conjunct in gemini was impatient to move on, so went ahead and bought the car.

Of course it looked perfect on paper, a really good deal and we always have such good luck with cars, or should I rephrase that, we always HAD such good luck with cars...this one on the other hand is - trigger scary music...the car from hell!

Well ever since then and as each new, unseen, and almost laughably unfortunate fault arises, I can not help but repeat "we shouldn't have bought a car under mercury retrograde".

My partner answers . . .

"you should have said at the time".

I did, but only in a half hearted way, I didn't INSIST, as I hadn't had personal experience of the consequences.

But I tell you what though, neither of us would EVER buy a car under mercury retrograde again!

So this mercury retrograde . . .

(10th - 30th December 2010) I am going to use its energy, and get on with my next stage of NaNoWriMo and reread, revise and rewrite.

So come on mercury retrograde get behind me on this, you owe me one!

"No one knows what he can do till he tries." - Publius Syrus