I’ve written many times about how National Novel Writing Month saved my writing the first time I did it following my 7 years straight of studying writing (BA and MFA). The challenge of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, which averages to about 1,667 words a day. It’s such an insane pace that you have no time to second guess yourself or get blocked, in my experience. I don’t always “win” NaNoWriMo (i.e. reach 50K words), but I always win in that I get something out of the experience - namely, it helps me rebuild and reinforce my writing process. It reminds me that this process can be joyful and fun.
This year, I started NaNoWriMo while visiting family in the Pacific Northwest, so the odds were not good that I would actually get a good start. I figured I’d just catch up when I got back to New Orleans, as I often have before. But I decided I’d just write a bit here and there to get started and something about that relaxed attitude really worked for me this year - the first day of NaNoWriMo, I wrote 3,407 words, mostly while my nephew napped and my family watched tv. These are some of my favorite memories of the trip - doing my own thing, the thing that makes me me - while they were there in the same room hanging out.
Once I got back to New Orleans, to work, to all of the extracurriculars I’m trying to pull back from in advance of a surgery in January, it was really hard to make writing a regular part of my day. I’m flat-out exhausted at the end of work days, and have been for the last several years. My body hurts, my brain is tired. I often end up vegging with an audiobook and a puzzle in bed. I hate that I can’t write after work, but I’ve also just decided to succumb because my body needs the rest.
And the mornings have been tough because the symptoms of one of my chronic conditions are worse then. In addition to those symptoms, I have often experienced extreme fogginess and it takes me hours to wake up properly and get going. So, I’ve been working on building a routine in the mornings that might support both my physical health and the possibility of writing. I’ve been working on this for most of the year, not just for the sake of NaNoWriMo, but with it in mind since it’s such a great way to reboot writing habits for me.
So initially, that left one of my days off as a “binge writing” day. The first of these was Election Day. I’d voted early, so I headed to one of my favorite coffee shops, met up with friends, and I had my largest single-day total - 4,694 words. My talented friends Karisma Price and Kayla Min Andrews cheered me on and then we had fabulous Vietnamese food to celebrate. Other writer friends cheered me on, in person during binge writing sessions, like Annell Lopez and Marti Dumas, and from afar via various forms of communication, like Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Mary McMyne, Noel Smith and Wendy Armington. There are many more writers, as well as family and friends who aren’t writers, who were (are) supportive and encouraging.
But I wasn’t able to be as productive on all my days off, couldn’t always binge write. I had to catch up at work after being out of town for a week, which added to exhaustion at home, I had to batch cook in order to address my chronic conditions and re-regulate my symptoms, after the interruption of the trip. I had to rest my body and my brain more than I wanted to, considering The Goal. But, as disappointed as I was, I knew I had to take the pressure off this year so I could hold onto that lightness and joy that I’d experienced. A goal, a deadline, external pressure is all so important and helpful for me, but as driven as I’ve always been, I also have to be kind to myself or I burn out and collapse - sometimes metaphorically and sometimes physically.
So, I talked to another one of my friends, and a co-worker who wanted to get back into a writing habit, and we agreed to meet at a favorite coffeeshop to write before work. Some days, I could only manage 15, 30, 45 minutes, sometimes this amounted to only 300, 700 or my lowest total ever, 93 words, but it was me returning to home base - my identity as a writer. I found myself a little less exhausted at work, laughing more at all the endless bullshit, because I was able to hold my true identity like a shield around me throughout the days. My friend/co-worker experienced a similar effect - writing before work made our days just a little bit easier, even if it was hard to get out of the house early.
We can’t do it every day, but we crave it, we work toward it. It gives us a project, a goal, that’s separate from whatever’s going on at work. We’re going to try to keep doing it 2-3 days a week in December and hopefully moving forward, though we’ll have to adjust depending on what’s going on - holidays, cars in the shop, chronic conditions, etc.
One morning, after writing (that was a three coffee shop morning!), I ran into a literary agent I admire who’d very kindly rejected The Winter Circus, and I found myself telling her about the NaNoWriMo project and giggling, because I was delighting in writing it. I was having fun. I wasn’t specifically thinking “oh, I have to present my next project very carefully because I’m talking to a literary agent.” The joy was leaking out of me.
So, to wrap up, I’m almost certainly not going to make 50k words - I’m not really even trying anymore. I’m just trying to live in the feeling of “I write regularly because it’s who I am, because I enjoy it.” But here’s my current stats because I do like documenting them for posterity/my future self:
Counting the 1,104 words of this post (and counting), I’ve written 26,468 words, words I would call creative and toward a greater project. There’s still time to write more today and tomorrow before NaNoWriMo ends and I might, or I might not. I got halfway toward the 50k words, but I absolutely, definitely and certainly won, am winning.
This post was written while fueled by the Feelin’ Good Spotify playlist.