I’m a serial NaNoWriMo failure
If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re a writer who’s already well-versed in the meaning of NaNoWriMo, but for those of you just tuning in:
NaNoWriMo is an annual writing challenge that takes place across the globe when, throughout the month of November, authors strive to write 50,000 words, generally of a brand new novel. It also has sister events in April and July called Camp NaNoWriMo, in which writers set their own targets for the month. There are meet-ups and virtual write-ins and forums for writers to make friends and cheer each other on. Basically, it’s a time when writers collectively conquer the world.
I’ve been an admirer of NaNo winners for years. The idea of writing almost an entire book in a concentrated period of time appealed to me greatly, as it clearly does to so many people (in 2018, 450,000 people participated with 11% of those winning the challenge). There’s something mega-appealing about a not-too-distant light at the end of the tunnel, even if the tunnel is gonna be a treacherous trek. It’s an intense period of work for a huge payoff — a first draft (or at least a massive portion of it)! For many writers, that’s the most difficult hurdle to bypass, but if you know you can do it in thirty days, well, you might just sign up for that epic quest of a month.
But just know, it’s called a challenge for a reason.
I’ve been a writer since I was a young kid and I used to spend every free moment of my time scribbling stories and inventing tales. I could knock out a few thousand words when I should have been doing my homework or between classes or on my lunch breaks. It came as naturally to me as breathing. In fact, when I had to step away from the laptop and into the real world, say, for a friend’s birthday party, I was often living a double-life: my body would be in the room, passing the parcel, bobbing for apples, but my mind was already crafting the event into a scene for a new story. I viewed my whole life through the lens of a story-teller, one who could fictionalise anything.
But then I grew up and learned that the world, and writing, had rules.
Unfortunately it’s a lesson I took to heart more than I should have because that creative edge, those side-quests I’d go on in my mind, they gradually disappeared as I got further into my academic education. Finally, I made it to college and realised it had all fallen away. It no longer came naturally to me; I had to work to invent a character or conjure up conflict.
Fear of failure, or writing poorly, stopped me from writing altogether.
Then, I learned of NaNoWriMo.
It was perfect, right? A worldwide challenge in which I was given express permission to write poorly and haphazardly, just for the purposes of getting my story onto the page. It was a let-yourself-out-of-jail-free card for guilt-free imperfect writing (to which, by the way, my entire mental health blog is now dedicated).
My younger self could knock out 50,000 words in no time, so I just had to use NaNoWriMo as a vehicle to reach my former potential. Simple, eh?
I never managed to participate fully during the month of November because that was always the season of excessive assignments and exam-prep. So instead I signed up for the July 2017 Camp NaNoWriMo but I set myself the same challenge as the main event; 50,000 words in 31 days (the November edition is a 30-day challenge, but never mind that).
At first it was slow and I only reached five or six hundred words per day, vowing that I would catch up later in the month. I was gaining momentum, even reaching the daily target of 1,667 words by the middle of the month, but then I went to Amsterdam with my best friends and writing seemed impossible to fit into our packed days. By the time I got back, Camp NaNo was two-thirds of the way through and I had about 25,000 words left to write.
So I buckled in and tried my best to do nothing but write. Inevitably, after two or three days of whirlwind typing, I’d be burned out and need a day off, and this cycle repeated so it was a strategy with mixed success. When July 31st finally landed, I had written 45,000 words of my first draft of a fictional mental health novel. I only needed 5K more. I could do it. It was totally achievable.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t hack it. You see, July 31st just happened to be one of the days when I was burned out. I tried to power through and I wrote almost 2,000 words, bringing me up to a total of almost 47,000 words within 31 days. That’s an incredible triumph, right? A victory, for sure, right?
Wrong. The challenge was to hit 50,000 words so I failed.
At least, that’s what I thought for a long time, although I tried to tell myself otherwise.
I tried to convince myself of the truth, that writing half a book in a month is a major win, especially given that I wouldn’t have written a word had it not been for the challenge of NaNoWriMo. Those 47,000 words would still be clouding my brain if I hadn’t tried. But I was hard on myself and trying meant nothing without the win to back it up.
In the five years since then, I’ve only written an additional 15K words of that same book. I’ve tried to emulate the same word count in following NaNos and Camps, but since my almost-win I’ve never managed to crack more than a few thousand words before giving up.
Why is that, I’ve often wondered to myself?
But it’s become clear. In almost-winning, I had cemented my vision of myself as a failure (despite having written freaking 47K words of a first draft in a month!). I had lost the meaning of NaNoWriMo.
The point isn’t to hit the challenge perfectly. The point is to give yourself permission to try, to write messily and chaotically just for the sake of writing. It’s for the love of the game and without the love of the game, what’s even the point?
And this year, as November 2022 approaches, I’m thrilled to say that I’ve rediscovered my love of the game through blogging, writing articles and personal essays. I may not be able to hit 50K in a month, but I can definitely have fun trying by finally giving myself a pass for poor writing. That’s what the edit is for.
So if you’ve ever considered participating in the challenge, I implore you to try. If you write anything at all, any words that otherwise wouldn’t have made it down onto the page, you’ve won.
So, really, there are no failures in NaNoWriMo. Not even me.
