It’s Been a While, NaNo

A dozen years ago, I attempted my first NaNoWriMo. For those unfamiliar, that’s National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to start writing a novel and get 50,000 words finished by December 1. That’s novel length, so theoretically, you will have written a whole damn novel in one month. It’s an ambitious goal, even for people that write novels regularly. I “won” it, back then, finishing at just over 50,000 words, but nowhere near done with the story.

I wasn’t happy with what I’d written. It was a story I’d had in my head for years, and the execution just didn’t match my expectations. Also, I was working a full-time job, and finding those several hours to write, in addition to all the house chores, self care, cat stuff, family things, making food and finding time to eat it, etc, was all too overwhelming. It was a process that was stressful in a way that made sure I didn’t make good art.

I know other writers work like that, getting up before their family is awake or staying up late, rooting out moments to write, and that’s how they get it done. But I can’t work like that. I think it’s my neuro-spicy brain. If I have ten minutes, I can’t write. I can’t get into the right headspace to put coherent words on a page that relate to the many other pages of the same story that I’ve already written. Give me a block of four uninterrupted house, though, and hooo boy. I’ll get that shit done.

I’ve been trying to start writing book 3 of my trilogy all year but, as you may know, I’ve been beset by chaos, crises, and calamities since literally midnight on New Year’s Eve. I got in a few pages here and there, and lots of notes. Traveling to New Zealand gave me time to make notes. But here I was on October 30 with a year full of trials and no book 3 and I thought: fuck it. Everything can take a break next month. I’m writing a goddamn first draft.

It's been phenomenal. All those pages of notes I took? Lifesavers. I think the outline was always there. I just needed to sit down and tease it out, and it took an hour at most. It’s day 6 and I’m something like 5,000 words ahead of schedule.

The major difference this time is, of course, I don’t have a day job. Sucks for my bank account. Does wonders for that “huge blocks of time” that’s necessary for me to be able to create. This will be my third novel that I’ll try to sell, and my fourth completed novel. I have so many abandoned ones they could populate a haunted orphanage.

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes you have to say “fuck it” and abandon your cat duties to your spouse while you scavenge for pizza crusts because you’re on a deadline and don’t have time to cook for yourself.