NaNoWriMo

  November has come again, for most this means the promise of Thanksgiving Dinner, seeing relatives, having them question your relationship status,  and the promise of Christmas just around the corner.  For me it means National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.  Every November three hundred thousand writers join together and each writes fifty thousand words of their novel.   I am one of them.  I first began writing with NaNoWriMo last November, after letting the idea for my book develop for nearly two years, with the knowledge that there would be no more pushing off putting words to paper any longer.

Writing a book for NaNoWriMo is like riding a roller coaster, except its more downhill than up and the side effects are loss of sleep, bags under eyes, excessive coffee consumption, and constant exhaustion that lasts the entire month of November.

It starts with excitement, this is going to be your year!  The ideas will come to you and the words will flow and you will ultimately end up with a finished manuscript that is beautiful and perfect and ready to be sent out to the publishers, who will fawn and fight over it and throw money at you while groveling at your feet while they beg you to give them your creative genius.  I assume . . . that's how I pictured it at least.  And it feels as if everything will go this way for the first few days, because you've thought about how you want this written, and you know what you're doing.  And this it!

And then you get into your second week.  And the words don't come, and you just stare at a blank page in your word document.  The minutes stretch out in front of you, and you're bored, and you begin to browse the internet "for inspiration."  Suddenly it's two hours later and you haven't typed a word but you have seen everything new on Tumblr so that counts for something and you'll just make up the two thousand words you were supposed to write tonight tomorrow night.  Except you don't.

November fifteenth comes, and you are halfway through the month, and you only have eight thousand words when you should have twenty five.  Now you're panicky and there isn't any time so you're willing to write down anything, your standards have dropped on what you would normally write and the words are being spewed onto the paper in any order that they fit together.

Last year, when I finished my NaNoWriMo novel at two in the morning on November twenty eighth, I was entirely exhausted, running on coffee and candy, and not aware of what I was typing into my manuscript.  However, when I finished writing I felt like the most accomplished person ever.  So for all of the blood, sweat, tears, and caffeine, that go into writing a NaNoWriMo novel, in the end after the grueling process that will try to ruin your life and crush your soul, you will feel like a superstar.

http://nanowrimo.org/
http://nanowrimo.org/participants/ellieiswrite