This week I decided to give National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) a go, and that scares the crap out of me. I’m comfortable with writing plays, but a novel is different. A play is a collaborative piece of writing: it is written knowing that a director and actor will interpret the words you have written and make them their own thing. Writing a play, you intentionally leave things up to interpretation, leave holes that the actor must fill in.
But for a novel, you write everything. You interpret, describe, and fill in the blanks for the reader. There won’t be an actor studying the words for clues to try and bring the character to live, or a director doing the same for the whole play. Or a designer. There will just be a reader who does all of that with their imagination, as they read your words.
I have read a lot of novels. I have since I was a child. But writing one seems like such a big deal to me. It seems like something huge. And it is out of my comfort zone, so of course it scares me.
But I have a kick ass idea, and I’m going to tackle it.
We’ll see how I’ve done at the end of November.