NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, a free online challenge for writers to create a novel of 50,000 words or more before the month is up.
I'd never done NaNoWriMo before, and upon watching my peers take it on, I got caught up in the excitement and joined NaNoWriMo in the middle of November.
NaNoWriMo has a very handy website which allows you to track your progress against an ideal curve, letting you know if you're on track to attain your target or not. There's also a buddy system and forum to help you find someone to write with, because according to their statistics, a writer is three times as likely to succeed when writing with a buddy.
So how did it go for me?
I was already at a disadvantage to the other writers because of my late start, but over the first few days, I made a lot of progress, checking in on other writers who were very supportive of me as well. I remember panicking about the last 14,000 words, and being advised to make a prologue and epilogue out of it. But when it came to the final week, I was unhappy with what I was looking at. I even sabotaged myself by refusing to save the document and using OpenOffice, software I wouldn't normally use, which normally wouldn't be a problem, but was not designed for users to fall asleep ontop of their keyboard. I lost a chapter as a result.
In the end, I was left with little more than three days to write the novel. My progress was steady, I was frustrated and exhausted frequently, but on the 29th, I discovered I had an ability to write faster than I normally would. Being sure to take plenty of breaks, I made it into the last day with 30,000 words. Then something terrible happened.
I read it.
If you've read my previous blogs, you'll know that I'm a fairly harsh critic, particularly when it comes to my own work.
The story was fine. The way I had told the story was awful. It wasn't immersive or exciting, it was murderous and horrific. There was no real threat, but the characters were so very dramatic and tearful and...simple. I found myself hating the simplicity of the heroes, the timidity of the enemies and the ugliness of every scene. What should have been a beautiful book that inspired the reader to dream, was actually a nightmare built to torture anyone unfortunate to gaze upon it. This book had the aura of hopelessness.
I could have lied about my word count. I could have kept going, just to have 50,000 words. But as long as I was dissatisfied with the novel, I would never accept it as a success.
National Novel Writing Month is a time for writers to push their boundaries, fix whatever it is getting in their way that stops them being a successful writer. For some people, it's to force themselves to find the time to write. For me? It was to improve my writing speed, fortify my dedication to the craft, and discover what my idea was lacking. I may not have been able to turn my idea into a perfect novel, but I was able to look at my writing process and change what wasn't working for me, to make myself write faster and seal the cracks that appeared from being under pressure.
I want to fix the novel one day. Maybe I'll keep it as it is though, and never publish it. As a reminder of what I hate about my own work, to contrast with the books that show me what I love about my writing. I hope to transform this nightmare of a book into a dream of further hope. I wish to hear this book say that broken hearts will mend and that as long as there is humanity, there is faith, morality and humility, each powerful enough to forge a future worth the struggle of the past.
I'll do some thinking on this one.