Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It’s a writing marathon where millions of people individually write a minimum 50,000-word novel during only the month of November.
I’ve had a few friends who have done it religiously, and one friend in particular who I distinctly remember being probably the only person my high school to have done it so whole-heartedly. Predictably, she did her degree in creative writing. Also predictably, she’s way cooler than I am.
Anyway, because of this image I built up about NaNoWriMo, I have found that every year, I mentally realize that NaNoWriMo is going on, but choose not to participate for absolutely paralyzing fear that I will not hit the 50,000 word mark. It’s a healthy fear, because…that’s a lot of words.
I did the math, and that calculates to about 1,667 words a day. Of course, realistically, that just doesn’t happen. Averages are created by the culmination of various numbers, and never by a pure constant. What does this mean? It means that some days I will write 4,000 words, and some days I will write none. It means that at the beginning of the month I will probably be writing non-stop, and then I will hate myself and my novel and then I will give up for a few days, and then freak out because my pride won’t let me not TRY for the 50,000 word mark, so then I’ll binge write another few thousand words until my internal word count is satisfied.
Still though, each year, I find myself longing to participate, and have the abundance of community that NaNoWriMo participants seem to create with each other. I want the excuse to hibernate, drink a lot of coffee, and obsess over plot points and characters in my own universe. I want to listen to video game soundtracks all day, and carry around my little Moleskin of random thoughts that I write while I’m on the subway, and absentmindedly sketch my character’s faces into my napkin at a restaurant.
I want the permission to say, “Sorry, I can’t, I have to write.”
Or to say, “I’m writing a novel.”
Or even better, “I am a writer.”
Even writing those phrases gave me chills. I’m both terrified and liberated. Up to this point, I have never written a novel. I write short fiction pretty regularly, occasional poetry, and of course blog posts, but the thought of spreading my ideas out with no restrictions is daunting.
Luckily, I have a lot of good friends, all of whom are very wise and give very good advice. Here are a few prize words from my friends on the idea of “failing NaNoWriMo”:
- “Then you have a partly finished novel, and you can tell everyone you’re writing a novel!”
- “Journey not destination?”
- “Turn off the internal editor and just keep going. You can pretty it up later. It’s really hard to do that but that’s what you need to do.”
- “Heidi – I don’t really have much to add but just do it. As the old adage, says, write drunk edit sober. Just get something on paper without worrying about how good it is, and see where that takes you.”
- “Luckily, for NaNoWriMo, quality explicitly doesn’t matter. You just write it. If you still like it, make it good after. If you don’t, reflect on what you did like and then start again.”
Unfortunately, this probably means that I’m going to neglect doing blog posts, or they’ll be HELLA SHORT in the month of November. If you want to follow my progress, or if you’re doing NaNoWriMo too, feel free to add me on the website! Also, if you want to read anything I’ve written, just shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you something!