NaNoWriMo postmortem

So National Novel Writing Month. First, I don’t think anyone expects you’re writing a full-fledged novel in 30 days/ 50,000 words. The goal is to put as many words on paper as you can and stick with it, even when it sucks. It’s an endurance test. It’s a habit-former.

I finished with 51,000 words. I’m less proud of that than the fact that I wrote every day. Every single day. I didn’t always make my wordcount goal but I did get words down – even when we went to Denver to hang with friends and party. There were days I exceeded the wordcount goal – sometimes by a lot. Sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was painfully hard. But I did it, and that felt good.

When I went back through my online archive, I found the last time (the only time) I attempted NaNo was in 2004. I got to 10,000 words before calling it quits. In fact, the last time I did any writing regularly was in 2004. Most people know that was the year my dad got sick. Well, he got diagnosed. He got sick later – November and December were his last very good months. The next year was hard, to use an epic understatement.

There were a lot of changes between then and now. I changed menial jobs a few times, went back to school and then ran my own business. Spouse was ready for a change so we began looking for a new place and he found work in Colorado. We picked up and moved, sight practically unseen. And it’s been excellent.

I missed writing. Today I was reminded that I wrote my first ‘book’ after reading Call of the Wild. There was also a serious melodramatic  novella in junior high about a parent with Alzheimer’s. I won the high school writing contest my sophomore year and was hooked. In college I got a story published AND I got paid for it. ‘Over the moon’ just about captures it. I’m not naive enough to believe that my NaNo project is good enough to get published – especially not without a lot of revision – or that it even should. But I like the release of a makebelieve land where I get to tell the stories that occur to me and writing them down makes them more real, keeps me engaged and is just NICE. I’m sure at some point I’ll try publishing again but for now, getting back in the habit is just what I needed.