Oh, NaNo! I had such high hopes for us together, but I promise, it’s not you. It’s me.
It’s only day two of NaNoWriMo, and I’m already wayyy behind. Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing everyone else’s progress reports, encouraging posts, and check-ins… But for me? Well. I really don’t have any progress to report!
I said from the beginning that I was only “loosely committing” to NaNoWriMo, but it’s hard not to feel discouraged when I haven’t put any words down on paper. But you know what? I physically can’t put any words down on paper right now.
Before I go on, I guess I should probably explain to you all just exactly WHAT #NaNoWriMo is. NaNo or NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which happens EVERY year in the month of November. People all over the world commit to writing an entire novel in a month. Sounds great in theory, right? Yeah. That’s about where it ends. Once you’ve signed up for NaNo, you’ve signed up for a whole month of stress, sleep deprivation, and eye strain from staring at the blinking cursor for far too many hours in a row.
Okay, I’m probably over exaggerating a little bit. NaNo is a great thing! I love that so many people love books and writing so much that we’ve dedicated an entire month to it! And I love how this event really brings the writing community together… For reals! There’s an entire official website for NaNo where all of the NaNo participants to chat, connect, and track their progress until they “win” (winning for most people means writing 50,000 words in thirty days) at the end of the month! People have even created Facebook groups for a similar purpose. Others do live videos on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. It’s a big deal! And like I already said, I love it!
But I also said earlier, right now, I currently can’t put any words down. Yes, I’m aware, you’re reading a blog post full of words, but these words are… More like a therapeutic journal for me than anything else. It’s easy for me to write here because I know I’m writing to all of you! My fellow book-loving, writer friends! You guys understand me and I don’t have to worry about structure here, meeting a word count, or whether or not I’m using the right tense verb for an action or the appropriate dialogue tags… Ah, the writer’s life.
The reason I’m having such a hard time is that I’ve been SO BUSY. If you follow me on Instagram you probably know from my stories that I spent all of last week in California for some family things. I went to a celebration of life for my grandma who passed earlier this year, I spent a lot of time with my cousins, parents, and loved ones, and I was otherwise just busy all of that week! I came back the day before Halloween, and I could already tell that all of the flying and running around had gotten to me. The next day was Halloween, which is a whole sugar rush of a different kind of craziness, and Piper (my toy Australian Shepherd) just started obedience school so training her has become kind of a priority. Still think I’m not busy? I’ve also got college work that just needs to be done, house stuff to take care of, and of course time that is reserved to be spent with my wonderful husband who loves me and supports me in everything I do and I couldn’t do any of it without him.
So, I’m busy. You get the picture right? Well, all of that business has caught up to me and now I have an awful head cold. I guess you could say I’m literally not in the “head-space” for writing! My eyelids feel like the way about five million pounds and when I’m not sniffling, I’m sneezing! The thought of trying to write something for my WIP right now is just… too much.
So, these first few days of NaNoWriMo, I’ve been taking it easy. I told myself when I committed to this that it would be low-key, but it’s still difficult to see everyone else “running” this marathon so to speak, and me just sitting on my couch curled up under a blanket.
An AuthorTuber that I love recently did a video. Actually, she’s doing an entire NaNoWriMo series of videos on her YouTube channel, where she talks about comparison. When it’s NaNoWriMo, and everyone you know is posting how today they wrote thousands and thousands of words, and you’ve barely written a hundred, it’s easy to be discouraged. Yes, NaNo is a great opportunity to write 50,000 words. But more importantly? NaNo is just an opportunity to write! Something, anything. The whole point of this month is to celebrate writing, not to stress yourself out over making a word count. Even though I’ve been saying that all along I still need to remind myself.
Here is Bethany Atazadeh’s video (the one that I mentioned above) about comparison and getting discouraged during NaNoWriMo:
Actually, here is my own video that I also did recently sort of tackling the same topic:
I guess I need to take a bit of my own medicine! LOL!
Basically, I just wanted to send a message to everyone participating in NaNo. If you didn’t write 2k today, if you didn’t write 2k yesterday, and you don’t think you’ll write 2k tomorrow, that’s okay! That doesn’t mean you’re failing at ANYTHING. You are still an author. You are still a writer. Your word count does not determine your validation. Use this month for what it’s meant to be used for! Celebrating your love of writing! Not stressing yourself out so much to the point where you hate writing with the fiery burning passion of a thousand suns.
I’m still going to try to write this month! I’m still going to keep encouraging all my other friends who are also participating in NaNo! But I’m also going to stop when I want to stop, not push myself if I just don’t have it in me, and give myself a break when I need one. Because my success is not defined by a little digitized number at the bottom left hand corner of my screen. Sure, I want to write 50k, but at the end of the day, whatever I have written is still a success! Even if it was only ten words, that’s still winning in my book! And for all of you participating in NaNo as well, remember that you are working at your own pace. Nobody’s life is the same as your life! Nobody’s schedule is the same as yours! Don’t compare, just enjoy the ride and enjoy the process.
(And maybe spend a lot of time in December editing! Haha!)
Until my next post,
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