What NaNoWriMo really means
The thoughts of a nearly NaNoWriMo “winner” on what NaNoWriMo really means.
Last year was my first NaNoWriMo. In the weeks that led up to the 1st November 2012, I was full of a nervous energy that nurtured spontaneous closed lip smiles and lengthy daydreams about characters I’d not met yet. I think I knew already that my life would change during the 50,000 word challenge and yet I couldn't have told you then, nor could I really tell you now, exactly how my life has changed. But it has.
Last year was a breeze, a soft and warm breeze of a tall palm tree I gazed up at as I wrote. I was living in Thailand, I had no friends or family close by, I cleared about 50% of my freelance work schedule before the month began and I had 30 degree heat, a private swimming pool and ice cold Singha to reward keeping up with my daily word count. I had been nurturing ideas for a short story collection for over a year. I had the stories mapped out. I just needed to write them.
I reached 50,000 words on 26th November 2012. I jumped into the pool for a late night swim and after drying off the water but not my big, fat grin, my partner and I got drunk off Thai green curry. I published that collection of short stories in August 2013.
This year, I am living in Amsterdam. I am playing catch up with freelance work (because I took so much time off to edit and finish the first book), I am surrounded with a truly wonderful but annoyingly tempting set of friends who like to meet me for long coffee and catch up sessions, I find the late sunrises cause me to sleep in and somehow watching TV by the fire doesn't feel like reward enough for just missing the word count goals I have stayed behind since the fifth day. I am writing my first novel, based on an idea that popped into my head a few months ago. I had a too brief chapter outline prepared, though it has needed almost as much attention as my first draft. I have no idea what I'm doing.
Today is the 26th November 2013 and I have written 48380 words so far. I am toying with the poetry of completing NaNoWriMo on exactly the same day I did last year. I could do it, easily - there’s life in the old girl yet tonight - but just when I saw the end approach, I stopped and wrote this instead.
Because I don’t think I'm going to feel the same giddy elation and need to celebrate when I do cross the finish line. I think I’ll feel all the other things marathon runners are overwhelmed with at the end of a race - exhaustion, the need to sleep for a week and to eat carbs for twice as long as that - but my novel is nowhere near finished. It needs at least another month and another 50,000 words before I am somewhere close to saving the first draft and ignoring it for a month or two in line with Stephen King’s advice of a minimum of six weeks “drawer time” for first drafts.
So do I feel the same excited, nervous energy? Do I feel like my life is going to change again after winning this year’s NaNoWriMo? Do I feel like the “winner” I’m on the cusp of becoming?
No. I don’t.
I don’t feel like a winner. I feel like a beginner. (But Chuck says that’s okay, so that’s okay.)
I don’t feel like this book is going to change my life. I'm not even sure it will ever see light outside my hard drive again once it’s finished. I'm not even sure I like the story any more.
But despite this I know one thing for absolute certain. NaNoWriMo will continue to change my life.
If it wasn't for NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't have published my first book.
If it wasn't for NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't have begun my second book.
If it wasn't for NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't know that come what may, I will finish the first draft of that novel. And I will go on to write another book and another and another. I will go on to aspire to write a minimum of 1000 words a day on new material.
If it wasn't for NaNoWriMo, I wouldn't know the real beauty, value and power in Never Never Never Giving Up.
If you have smashed your way through NaNoWriMo without a single bead of sweat forming on your brow and if you marvelled at what those silly people were stressing about in their tweets about word sprints and playing catch up, well, I salute you. You deserve that skinny dip and that Thai green curry, go eat, drink and be smug.
But be sure to come back again next year, because you may then find out what this is actually all about.
Because now I know what NaNoWriMo really stands for. It’s about carrying on regardless. It’s about climbing out of the plot holes; about battling through the characters’ inconsistencies and about ignoring when you fade in and out of different tenses. It’s about pushing through the emotional, mental and even physical barriers — do you know how sore the pads of my thumbs and the tips of my forefingers are right now? It’s about suffering for your art. It’s about ploughing on even when you have nothing left to sow. It’s about finding the occasional moment of beauty in all those ugly lines you know will be edited away in a heartbeat. It’s about being part of an international community of people who can instantly empathise with all of the above and countless other silly writing woes. It’s about chasing dreams and writing the words that will maybe one day make them come true.
NaNoWriMo claims to help you write 50,000 words of your novel, but it‘s not that simple. It hasn’t really taught me how to do that and nor could it ever. That will always be up to me to do. But it has taught me that all of the above challenges, sufferings, perspective and tired, tired eyes are necessary to write a book. And much more must follow if you want that book to be something special.
So, maybe that’s how my life has changed. NaNoWriMo changed my life by teaching me to Never Never Never Give Up.
