A November Without NaNoWriMo

Even a few weeks ago, I was still deciding whether to take part in National Novel Writing Month. Though I knew I would be insanely busy and had another novel to work on, NaNo still hovered hopefully on the horizon, tempting me with thrilling possibilities. Eventually, sense blocked it out. In light of my need to concentrate on my current novel, I decided to let NaNoWriMo go.

I've participated in NaNoWriMo for four years. The last three, I've won. I also did Camp NaNoWriMo this summer, bringing my completed novel drafts up to 4 (the last two were the same novel, Void.) A lot of my writing energy gets saved up for November, so I can launch myself onto one story and concentrate all my abilities on it. This may not be the best way, but it's the way I usually do it. Spending November doing anything but madly writing around everything else sounds strange to me. That's one attitude that came to mind when my cousin told me last year that she wasn't doing it.

 "NaNo had just become part of the year. In November I'd write a novel. That was a five year streak!" she said.

To which I replied, "I will NaNo until I die from it!"

Right now, I'm not interested in killing myself trying to write a new novel and fix an old one at the same time. Still, I'll miss the breakneck pace, the creativity, the obsessive word count updates. I'll miss knowing that thousands of writers all around the world are striving for the same goal as me.

So, no 50,000-word goal. But I can still give myself writing goals for November. 50,000 words in a month comes out to 1,667 words a day. That's usually about 3 single-spaced pages for me (doesn't sound so scary now, huh?). I can try to revise 3 pages a day. This is a useful, practical goal. Some days I may be able to do a lot more than that, and others it'll be hard to measure due to plot threads that need major doctoring. Some days I may actually end up writing a lot. In any case, this draft should be alpha reader-ready by the end of November.

Those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year, good for you. Go crazy. Sometimes it's the best thing that can happen to you or your novel -- it was for me.

Poor Life Decisions

Looking back over the last couple days, I can't say that things haven't been going well. I've kept up with homework, hung out with friends, and in general have been enjoying myself. Still, there are a couple of things I should not have been doing -- things that would make life a lot easier if I could plan better. They are, in no particular order:

• Deciding to do Camp NaNoWriMo in what I knew would be an extremely busy month, getting ten thousand words behind in the second-to-last week, and being inconsistent about filling that gap because of such silly things as "being tired," or "not feeling like writing." Consequently, for the last several days of August, I had to spend several hours every night writing very very quickly and probably very poorly in order to catch up. This was aggravated by
• Closing documents without saving because I got confused because I had too many documents open because I was trying to check my word count over various documents because I was disorganized because I need to figure out a better system to keep track of writing because I haven't bought Scrivener yet because I'm a poor college student. Consequently, I lost 2,000 words in a critical moment. This was stressful, since I had been
• Letting tiredness build up from sleeping six hours or less the past several nights, and then
• Playing the fifth game of mafia with people in my dorm when I really needed to go to bed before having to wake up very early the next morning, and then
• Deciding to play board games the next night with people I love outside my dorm, because obviously I hadn't had enough yet, culminating in
• Playing a three-hour game of Cities and Knights, in which my exhaustion was almost causing me fairly serious emotional problems, and which could and should have ended an hour and a half earlier.

Six short hours of sleep later, I woke up for my 8 a.m. class, really feeling pretty good for all that. But now daylight is telling me things I should be doing:

• I should read the play for which I need to organize and find props before tech weekend three weeks from now.
• I should take a nap today. Really.
• I should talk to the freshmen on my floor and make sure everyone's doing okay with the transition to college. I should also make some time to pray with them.
• I should  probably be doing homework instead of writing a blog post.
• I should figure out what happened to my Fit for Life syllabus.
• I should try much harder to find someone to permanently switch work shifts with me, since I have a class when I'm supposed to work.
• I should write some personal letters I've been meaning to get to for the past two weeks.
• I should take a minute to be quiet. That is all.

This sounds like a lot. But even in writing these lists, reviewing all the things that filled my time, I don't regret anything (well, except not writing earlier... that could have solved lots of problems.) But I got to be around really awesome people. I stayed busy. And I accomplished lots of things, despite having to work around many obstacles. Last week was great. But, in light of all this, I can try to make next week better.