P.S. About NaNoWriMo

It is November 30th.   I did not finish, I did not win this year.  Again.  I only made it to about 18,000 words.  And I’m okay with that.  I’m over the guilt, over the feeling of failure.  (Almost.  By tomorrow I’ll be totally over it.)  I’m relieved that December is here so I can quit feeling guilty because I’m too distracted to focus.  I’ll probably try again next year, when no one is getting married.  When I’m not doing two presentations at NWP.  When my calendar is clear, because so far next November’s calendar is completely clear. And I’ll plan ahead.

So, for this year, I’m over it.  Yeah!!

Another NaNoFlop

Well, that’s how I’m feeling today.  I set myself this task that I believed was doable, even without any particular advance planning, and disregarded the fact that I always travel for a week in November.  This year we threw in a family wedding and bachelorette party to prepare for along with cooking the TG dinner (nothing too new about that!) and I am wobbling around at less than 18,000 words with only four days to go.  I don’t know why I thought I could actually do this, in this of all years, but I did.  I see my writing colleagues spinning along at 35,45, 48,000 words and feel like a flop.  I feel like I should have made sure I could do this because Grant wrote that article about me, I took on the task of being a Municipal Liason, and, well, I believed in myself.

Or did I?  Did I undercut myself by not planning it all out ahead of time?  Do I just get mid-novel ennui in which it seems like too much to actually write through the whole thing?  Do I fear not knowing how to end it so guard against that by not really getting beyond started?  All of that, probably.  Whatever it is, this has not been my year for finishing. Again.  No matter how much I write between now and Sunday, 30,000 words are not going to happen, certainly not 30,000 words in which I go all the way through the beginning, middle and end of a novel.  So, there you have it.

A nanoflop!  There’s always next year, I guess.  Although if I can’t work past my stuck-in-the-beginning without a way to forge aheadness, I will never finish.  The nanoflopness isn’t about doing it all in the month of November, or this month being too busy.  No, not really.  It’s about me.  Gulp.  That’s way more than November being busy.  Way.

NaNoWriMo Day 2

I’m already behind!  Yesterday I wrote about 1400 words, which has me 200+ words behind.  Yikes ! have to redouble my efforts today.  Wonder what the slowdown is.  I did this last year as well.  I thought I would turn some life experiences into a novel and had a hard time with it because there was too much truth in it.  I’m doing the same thing this year, it seems.  I hope this is just that first weekend blockage, and it will flow away as I make progress.  I think it is because when you write about something you actually did, even if you fictionalize it, it is hard to see it as having a plot, and if you already know the ending the element of surprise is not there.  So I stop and think about it, wondering if I should choose something else.  Writing nothing at all.  Except blog posts.  Hmmm…