NaNoWriMo aka Where I've Been Lately

During the last week of October, a friend of mine--whom I'll call "Donna", since that's her name---reminded me that on November 1st, the annual NaNoWriMo event would begin. She told me about it last year as well, when I handily brushed it off as insanity. This year, the challenge seemed intriguing.

What NaNoWriMo stands for is National Novel Writing Month. Since it's global, I'm not sure why it's not called International Novel Writing Month, but that's not up to me. Beginning at 12:00 a.m. on November 1st, registered participants may begin writing a novel. By 11:59 p.m. on November 30th, the (minimum) 50,000 word, 175 pages novel must be complete. How daunting is that? Of course, they try to reassure you that you need only produce the first draft and they encourage you to save all revisions and editing until after the first draft is finished. That makes the goal seem a tiny bit more reachable.

It seems the people behind NaNoWriMo, aka The Office of Letters and Light, know the Achilles' heel of most writers: procrastination. We all have fascinating plots, colorful characters, and witty dialogue in our minds. The problem is sitting down and writing it out. And that's a big problem if you want to get any traction as an author. So, NaNoWriMo, like an imagined stern headmaster, accepts no excuses. There are no deadline extensions available. The rules of the challenge are clear and few and even as I registered on their site, I wondered what in the world I'd gotten myself into.

Then, I upped the ante. Not only had I become an "Official Participant", but I actually went around telling people about it. I tweeted it on Twitter. I made updates about it on Facebook. I tried to make it as humiliating as possible for myself if I backed down from the challenge. Characteristically, I begin projects full of enthusiasm and productivity. And, at about the halfway point, I meander off in some vague other direction. This time, I gave myself daily goals that had to be met. The scenario that gave me cold sweats in the middle of the night was an image of myself at 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 30th with three chapters left to go. I promised myself, if nothing else, I would not play that role.

So, I kept at it. And friends and family, both in my physical world and my online world, encouraged me and cheered me on. My husband, always my staunchest supporter and advisor, became my writing coach. My son allowed me blocks of time to be alone with my laptop and never complained. My editor/cousin/soul sister in California insisted that I email her a new chapter every day. Most of my writing got done between 11:00 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., but I met each daily goal. No excuses. And, somewhere along the way, I realized I'd gone too far to turn back. I no longer had a choice in the matter.

And on Friday, November 27th, at just about 8:00 p.m., I wrote the last line of my novel, Blood Relations. I'd made the goal, met the challenge. And, as I suppose is the benefit of any project like NaNoWriMo, I learned something about myself. I can see a project through to completion. And that knowledge is a very valuable reward.