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A Love Letter to NaNoWriMo
In October 2023, I submitted the first draft of the final chapters of my novel to my writing group for feedback, and about the same time I noticed emails reminding me that National Novel Writing Month was starting soon.
I knew I wasn’t participating in the traditional November “write fifty thousand words” of a first draft in thirty days, or as I’ve heard published authors call “fast drafting”, given I was just about to start the revision of my current novel.
Yet I felt the urge to do something to celebrate and bookmark the event, the nonprofit, and the community that brought so many elements together for me, and especially that I had a solid first draft of over a hundred thousand words, with developed characters that didn’t all sound the same and doing interesting things (i.e, an actual plot).
This isn’t a letter to say that everyone should participate, especially given the nonprofit announced its pending closure due to financial struggles, because first off, you’ll seldom catch me using the word should, and second, because it’s a love letter to the event, fueled by the nonprofit, and its small staff of employees, large cadre of volunteers, and every participant for all this has brought to my life in the past twelve years.
In 2013, I was struggling with the motivation to continue my first novel. The characters had first…
