For my very first post for Fire Star Press I wrote about
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and why it works for me. Once again, NaNoWriMo is upon us and I am busily pounding out words, determined to hit the 50,000 word goal for the first time in several years. Therefore, in the interest of time, I am borrowing a post from my personal blog and updating it a bit. I hope you enjoy!
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| Photo courtesy of www.123rf.com |
As defined on the
official web site, “National Novel Writing Month (
NaNoWriMo)
is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing. On November
1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word
novel by 11:59 PM on November 30.” It is a completely insane idea that
is also completely doable. This marks my eighth year of participating in the chaos that is
NaNoWriMo. I “won” in 2011, 2012, and 2014 completing 50,000 plus words before the November 30th
deadline. The other years all fell short for various reasons.
I'm a huge fan of NaNoWriMo and probably make it sound like it's all unicorns farting
rainbows. Alas, it is not. All these years I have harbored a
deep, dark secret. I thought that I was the only one until I saw the
following tweet from Derek L Reiner
(@DerekReiner) on November 16, 2014:
#NaNoWriMo turns me into someone I don’t like. I doubt I could
write professionally as the deadlines would turn me into a monster.
I could have hugged the man. I am not alone! I could finally air my
dirty little secret – NaNoWriMo turns me into a monster. There. I said
it. For thirty days, my world revolves around reaching the 50k goal and
heaven help those who get in my way. In order to write 50,000 words in
thirty days, you must write an average of 1667 words
per day.
Life being what it is, I don’t get to write every day which means that I
have to double up on other days. I find myself struggling to be nice to
those around me. Heaven help my hubby if he invites me to go to a
movie, or something else equally innocent. He deserves better than the
response he receives. I snarl at him, my newly grown NaNo fangs dripping
venom: “A movie? Are you kidding me? It’s NaNoWriMo – I’ve got 2000
words to write! I don’t have time for a movie.” He slinks off to hide in
another room while my claw-tipped paws return to tapping out words.
Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but only just. Most of the
time in November I seem like a normal, friendly, middle-aged woman. Most
of the time I manage to keep my sarcastic replies locked away inside.
On the outside I say “A movie is a wonderful idea! What would you like
to see?” while on the inside the NaNo monster howls and threatens to
burst out of my chest and rampage through the Nostromo, sparing no
lives. Wait, wrong monster. Any way, you get the idea.
To make matters even worse, November is when we celebrate
both Thanksgiving and my birthday. The past few NaNos have not gone well for me. November turned out to be the month when an elderly parents health began to fail or one of them passed away. Now that they are no longer with us, my husband has stepped up to fill in the gap and will be having surgery on the shoulder he damaged while we were getting our house ready for Hurricane Michael. So, now that I think about it, may the real monster is November. It senses my determination to compete and throws obstacles in front of me - occasionally insurmountable ones.
However, I'm entering this year's NaNo with a different mindset. Yes, I would like a successful year to prove to myself that I can still do this. However, the past few years have taught me that it's okay to not "win" - it's not the end of the world. So, win or lose at the end of the month I will have quite a few words written that I didn't have before and I'll have a novel ready to go into revisions. So, whether it's a "win" under NaNoWriMo guidelines or not, it will still be a win for me.
Do you NaNo?
