I’m not a writer. Goodness, no, I’m not a writer. When I signed up for my third year of NaNoWriMo in mid October, I knew that. I don’t plan on publishing what I write, ever. So, people ask me why I do it? Its probably for the same reasons that I blog. Its my creative outlet and aside from the stressful last few days when I have no idea HOW I can manage to crank out x thousands of words, I look back and I’ve learned a lot.
NaNoWriMo this year was actually pretty surprising. I’ve never really looked back at the process but this year my goal was to be disciplined and to stay as on track as possible. The first 10 days actually faired pretty well. I had been burned out from work on November 1st but I still managed to almost reach my first 1,667 at the end of the day. I slipped behind by a day and held onto that. My issue was preparing for my weekend away and the actual trip took away a lot of my time and after that, it was a game of catch up. Then I made the horrible decision of watching TV series and then I lost my focus. I mean it went from 5,000 words then 10,000 words behind in the week that followed.
Going in this last week was hard. I wanted to give up with everything in life happening at the same time. But, I reminded myself that I can still get back on track.. I did it last year with even less word count. So I sat down, pulled out my notebook and took a section to brainstorm the next few things I wanted to happen in my novel. Those things got me through the 10,000 words, then I took another timeout to outline the connections and possible crossings that could happen and there you go, ideas came flowing back to me. Stress, of course came at the same rate but I averaged about 3000 – 4000 words a night in the past few nights. It wouldn’t be enough to make it but at least, the last day was on a Saturday and I can just sit and write and write and write. It didn’t exactly turn out that way and you’ll see why soon enough but I did spend the evening doing that 🙂
Reality was, by Friday morning, I was exhausted and tired and with about 11,000 words left to write in two days and getting about 4 hours of sleep every night, I wasn’t sure how to approach it anymore. Should I quit? Go on? Its funny how things happen. My mom’s never really interferes in what I do regarding blogging and writing. She just observes but when I started talking about it, she looked at me, and I swear she genuinely just wanted to ask me why I put myself through this crazy thing because she didn’t understand. Its funny. Thinking about it now, its been a while that I’ve answered anything with such certainty about what I do. So, what did I answer her, you ask? I told her that it was once a year that I reminded myself that I can put all my heart and energy into something, focus on it and with a fair amount of hard work, make it to the end. It reassures me of what I can achieve. Most things in life takes time to happen even if we keep working at it but this reminds me that even if I don’t see the results now, it’ll come around eventually 🙂 The most important part is to at least start it.
Maybe that little bit meant nothing to you but to me, suddenly that whole vision of the next two days being impossible to happen actually went away. I realized why for the majority of it, I was so calm because I remembered that. I was doing this to learn from the experience, whether I won or not wasn’t so important. But I also value finishing what I start so if it means overdosing on some green tea and opening my eyes with a toothpick and gluing my butt to the chair for 10 hours straight, I’m going to do it. Last year I did 40,000, whats 10,000 in 2 days, right?
Everyone has their reasons for doing (or not doing) NaNoWriMo. Writing should be fun and the point of NaNoWriMo is not necessary that we have to pass the 50,000 but its to try your best to start something and hopefully finish it. You’re already a winner if you did that. Maybe there is no badge and maybe I didn’t reach my word count and I don’t get to buy the winner T-shirt but in my heart, I learned from what I experienced during these past 30 days and thats what counts.
BUT, wait, all hypothetical here because you know what? At around 11:35pm, I managed to validate my *very flawed* romance novel for a total word count of 51,048.
I really would like that one time where its not up to almost the last minute. Good thing is that I am very proud to say that I’m actually excited to edit this one because I know that I have more stuff to add in and a whole lot of corrections and goodness, where did I put that thesaurus?
For now, I’m going to take a break and get back into some reading. I’ve missed my books SO MUCH! Especially that half-read Ender’s Game sitting at the corner of my night table crying out to me every night…
Remember to check back for the December announcements and updates 🙂 I’m aiming to get it out later today, if not, latest would be Monday morning.
Have an awesome Sunday everyone! You all rock because despite the schedule slowing down over here, you all still came and gave me support. The likes, comments, follows all made my day when I thought my stats were going to drop. Talk about warming my heart, that says it right there. I give a virtual hug to everyone of you because you are all awesome! Remember that 🙂
Tranquil Dreams 