Tis the season to spend all of your free time glued to your computer, hating life and questioning why you dream of being a writer.
For those of you that don’t know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is an annual event that brings writers young and old, newbies and pros, the challenge of writing and entire novel in one month. That’s 30 days to write 50,000 words.
Dear God.
Sounds challenging, eh? Yes it is. Pretty much impossible, right? Hell no.
I first found out about NaNoWriMo a few years ago, before I had ever written a story more than a few thousand words. Some of my friends accepted the challenge, and so I decided I would as well. I didn’t realize that I was about a week late, which left me with only 20 or so days to finish what seemed to be a monumental task.
It was.
Good thing I had just graduated from college several months before. Good thing I didn’t have a job. I needed all the time I could to finish this beast.
Most of my friends dropped out quick. One or two kept going until midway through the month before deciding they wouldn’t be able to finish on time, so they just stopped. But I kept going. I had to average something like 2,500 words a day to keep pace. Some days I fell behind, and they added up quick. I almost gave up several times. Some days I could breeze through 2,000 to 3,000 words no problem, but most of the time it was painstakingly slow. Towards the end I was sitting at my computer for 12 hours a day, if not longer.
But on that final day I crossed the 50,000 word mark, and then I kept going. I filled in another 3,000 words that day to finish up my story. I had done it. I completed an entire novel. The first draft was error ridden, full of loose ends, and had terrible dialogue, but it was a complete work. During the first day of writing I kept fixing the mistakes as I made them, but I quickly realized that I could never get the project done at that pace. I just let my mind figure out the story and my fingers typed up my ideas as fast as they could.
Hooray for me!
And now that novel has expanded to 85,000 words. I completely rewrote a second draft and have done a ton of revising. It’s still not complete, but it is on it’s way.
Good luck to all of you Nano-writers out there, and keep at it. Even if you fall behind, just keep going. Finishing in 30 days is not the point, it’s just motivation. To finish is the point, and you’ll get there as long as you keep chugging along.
